Last week I think you saw the video of a speeding train crashing into a stopped car. Some of them died. Instead of finding out who is right and who is wrong, we had to write about the story of two more deaths. Now we write stories about death every day. As journalists, we are not happy to write and write stories like this every day when we cannot stop people from dying. Living in a country with no road safety is a very dangerous thing.
Also, drivers who don’t care about road safety, vehicles without safety devices, rising tire prices in the country, rising spare parts prices, and not using the accessories that should be used in a car due to these reasons. Problems such as failure to remedy the problems caused by brake system components, tire grooves are the direct and indirect causes of these accidents. But sometimes things like carelessness of drivers and drunkenness also cause these. However, what we are trying to write is not what you want to hear at all. This is a story about very bad news that you shouldn’t be told and we shouldn’t be writing.
We have received several reports issued after a certain survey conducted in Sri Lanka, that is, after a proper survey and a proper numerical calculation. This report has been issued by the Ceylon Traffic Board with the contribution of resources from the Sri Lanka Medical Association’s Expert Committee to Prevent Road Accidents. If you read this story correctly, there is a very dangerous situation that get highlighted here. There is a reference here about how many people died in road accidents in Sri Lanka last year.
This report states that 2,515 people have died on the roads in the last year alone. The number of major road accidents reported last year is 21,953. The number of people seriously injured by those incidents has been mentioned as 6,231. The number of injured is 8,209. We should think about how dangerous it is that more than two thousand people die on the road in a country without war.
This report contains another very sad and dangerous note. How many schoolchildren have died in these traffic accidents? They claim that 411 school students were killed in these accidents. According to the Sri Lanka Medical Association’s expert committee for preventing road accidents, 411 people died. As a result, we believe these statistics are correct.
The Ceylon Transport Board buses are the government vehicles that have joined the country’s main transport system. We usually say C.T.B. Buses. According to these statistics, 69 people died in bus accidents alone in the previous year. So, what has been done to prevent people from dying in this manner?Improper road repair, improper use of required notice boards to prevent road accidents, as well as problems in road systems, improper guardrail construction, all these have an impact on these accidents. Also, the previously mentioned factors, such as improper vehicle repair, have an impact on these accidents. And the drivers’ negligence.
We see that especially big vehicles like buses and tippers have built their own terms and have reached the point where they can travel on the road as they want. When a small vehicle comes in front of them, these drivers have reached the point where they drive ahead without any problem. Who will take action against these? There is no point in collecting these statistics.
We remind the Sri Lankan authorities at this time. What have you done to put this country in a place where there is no danger tomorrow? In this way, it is useless to call numbers and makes calculations. Accidents should be avoided. It should not be writing an article like this by presenting an even bigger number next year. At what point are the drivers who drive on the road in such a way as to cause accidents identified? Where are they punished?
After an accident, hanging the driver to death is no use. An accident should be prevented before it happens. Buses are racing on the road, the police are not bothered, how much power the tippers have. The tippers go on the road thinking that the road is their mother’s father’s estate. They can go any way they want, hit any vehicle and escape.
Because the tipper driver is safe, Driver’s license is also safe. The reason for that is in a high vehicle, in a high place, in an environment surrounded by iron. More than that, the owner of the tipper, a politician, a moneylender, or a rogue in a village. Therefore, they come forward to save the tipper driver without any problem. We are not saying 100%, but 98%. There may be a very good person in our village. He might have a tipper too. However, these are the people who are mainly responsible for the accidents. Things like drunk driving happen in our country.
The environment of our country has been created in such a way that if you catch someone you know, let that person take a small shot, cheat here and there and play a little game, you can make any mistake and run away. But there is a law in our country. The problem is bending the law. The problem is that the law is sneaking around. Because of that, it should happen that no more children die on the road.
If boys and girls, adults and children’s fathers who left home in the morning and bowed to their parents and came to the street, will never come home again, we should think twice more than this. We are people who ended a thirty-three-year war with difficulty. By doing that, we have stopped people from dying, and now in a country without bombs, if more than two thousand people are dying like this every year, we need to sit down and think about who and where is at fault. Because it is the people of your country and mine who are dying.
