Horns and hoons

Editorial-June 8, 2014,

The police have begun to look for private buses fitted with air horns, we are told. Why should they expend time and energy conducting checks? All those contraptions which pass for buses have such pneumatic devices loud enough to make even wild jumbos flee as fast as their legs can carry them. It is no exaggeration that driving small vehicles on Sri Lankan roads full of such monstrous juggernauts, roaring and bearing down on them, is so scary as to make one’s ticker go haywire.

The noise pollution, however, is the least of all problems private buses cause though it has to be tackled and the on-going efforts to achieve that end are to be appreciated. It looks as if bus drivers believed that all other vehicles have to make way for them all the time and move at a pace determined by them. They hog roads much to the consternation of other motorists or race at breakneck speed with one another with absolutely no regard for other vehicles and pedestrians. They zip on the wrong side of the road, dangerously overtake all others moving ahead of them and make sharp turns to drop or pick up passengers. The police look the other way!

Time was when the raison d’etre of the traffic police was to manage traffic and ensure road safety. But, today, they have apparently become one of the government’s revenue generating arms. They are preoccupied with iri sellama or ‘lines game’; they wait, hiding behind lamp-posts or wayside trees, to book motorists who happen to cross the continuous centre line on narrow roads. They don’t seem to care two hoots about the private buses that flout all the rules in the Highway Code. For, among the private bus owners are powerful government politicians, high ranking police officers and other influential persons. If private bus drivers are booked for the various offences they commit and made to pay fines the way they should, the revenue so generated may be sufficient to maintain the entire Police Department.

It is doubtful whether most private buses are roadworthy. This is perhaps the only country where buses and other big vehicles such as articulated trucks carrying forty-foot containers are allowed to use, for front wheels, rebuilt tyres which in most cases are worn below the legal limit of tread. Most buses have tiny side mirrors and their drivers have to back up blindly as they are without electronic reverse motion advisors to guide them. No wonder they run over so many people and ram other vehicles in the process. In the UK, steps have been taken to fit all heavy vehicles with sensors to prevent them from knocking down pedestrians and cyclists. The government should seriously consider adopting the British system to minimise road accidents which snuff out as many as six lives a day.

Worse, some private bus drivers are not sober at the wheel. They are hooked on narcotics. The Lanka Private Bus Operators Association itself has revealed that more than 30 percent of bus workers in the Western Province are addicted to drugs. It boggles the mind why the police and the transport authorities have not so far taken any action to nab bus drivers high on drugs. The police are capable of nabbing only drunk drivers with the help of breathalyzer tests etc. So long as druggies are allowed to wreak havoc making roads safe for one and all will remain a distant dream.

Cracking down on errant private bus drivers who have become a law unto themselves as well as making them fall in line is half the battle in ensuring road safety. Now that action has been taken to tackle the horn menace, let the police go the whole hog, if they dare, and deal with hoons as well.