The War On Terror On Our Roads – Who Will Declare It?

By Nishthar Idroos -April 1, 2015

Nishthar Idroos

Two-year-old Oshada Savindu Shasmika from Weligama was one of the latest victims of our killer roads. The fatal accident happened recently and continues to contribute in significant number to the unstoppable fatalities. It seems our roads have got used to devouring victims with aggressive and renewed rapacity. Gallons of dark, thick red blood have consistently meandered our well macadamized roads only to be washed away at the behest of officials representing the law enforcing agency and mother nature clearing it for us at no extra cost.

The nation may have lost a scientist; a daughter may have lost a father, parents a very precious child. These are human lives that are being snapped-up at regular intervals, they’re not mere numbers for the statistician to manipulate. They’re heartrending and distressing. Narratives that coalesce a strange malaise, intriguing a nation’s intelligentsia but strangely the administration remains oblivious and in deep slumber. The daily inflow of gory accident sites brought to our living rooms by courtesy of the local and social media has somewhat desensitised the psyche of the nation.

Man cannot prevent pre-destiny but is ably endowed to shun insanity. It’s high time some authoritative task force took a close look at the northbound statistics in traffic related fatalities in the country. The experts should be able to impute some sense to those many colorful charts that embellish walls of cabins occupied by traffic OICs in various police stations around the island. These charts ominously confront the public each time they visit them but the public has no clue why they remain there and any action taken thereof.

Should the tragedy of this kid be just another entry in the police log book until another macabre site enters the public domain by way of a frantic 911 call from some distant village or town? It would contain horrific details of victims being painstakingly extricated from mangled wreckages, maybe with the assistance of an automatic saw and dispatched to a nearby hospital. The hospital in turn would pronounce a victim or two as deceased upon admission and would send the bodies to a morgue where loved ones would converge and inconsolably weep, wail and whine before eventually identifying the bodies and make preparations for final rites. Doesn’t this sound so atypical? An unmistakable sequence of events, so easy to write, so profoundly predictable.Read More