-By LeN Colombo Correspondent
(Lanka-e-News -12.May.2025, 11.30 PM) When 22 lives were abruptly ended last week as a bus tumbled down a hillside near- Garandiella- Nuwara Eliya, Sri Lankans responded as they always do: with shock, candlelit vigils, and a brief spike in national outrage before moving on. The wreckage is cleared, the headlines disappear, and the buses keep barreling down the roads with brakes that barely function and drivers who haven’t slept in 18 hours. The next crash is not a possibility—it’s a certainty, waiting for its turn.
Sri Lanka's roads have long been a death trap dressed up as a transport system. While shiny new expressways and flyovers make for excellent ribbon-cutting ceremonies, it is on the nation's interior roads—its dusty provincial arteries and jungle-bound mountain passes—that public transport becomes not just inefficient, but lethally dysfunctional. The tragedy of Sri Lanka’s public transport is not just the lack of investment, but a wholesale absence of regulation, enforcement, and—most damningly—care.
Step into a typical Sri Lankan bus terminal and you’ll witness something closer to a demolition derby than an organised public service. Private bus drivers race each other to collect passengers, jostling for position not just at stops but at high speed on winding roads. The state-owned buses (the Central Transport Board, or CTB), far from being a bastion of discipline, often join in the chaos.
There are no enforced working hour restrictions, meaning some drivers go for 12-hour shifts without proper rest. In other countries, that would be illegal. In Sri Lanka, it’s just Tuesday.
“It’s a simple calculation,” says one former CTB inspector. “More trips mean more revenue. There’s no incentive to rest. There’s no disincentive for dangerous driving. It’s a race, and the loser is the public.”
The Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka has intermittently raised alarms about the lack of driver welfare and the implications for road safety. Those alarms have gone largely unanswered, drowned out by the honking of overworked buses swerving around tuk-tuks.
At every street corner, there’s a traffic policeman. Ask anyone in Colombo and they’ll tell you: they’re not there for safety—they’re there for shakedowns. Spot-checks for expired licences, insurance papers, or the all-important “smoke test” (emissions checks) are common, but they rarely go deeper than paperwork.
What no one seems to be checking is the actual mechanical condition of the buses. Are the brakes functional? Is the steering aligned? Do the tires meet minimum safety standards?
“Smoke test? That’s the only thing these buses pass—with flying colours,” jokes a private bus conductor from Kandy. “The rest? Well, as long as it starts, it goes. That’s enough for us.”
Mechanics estimate that up to 40% of buses on Sri Lanka’s roads would fail a basic MOT-style test—if one even existed. There is no regular, independent roadworthiness inspection regime for commercial buses in Sri Lanka. The Department of Motor Traffic (DMT) is tasked with such oversight, but is woefully underfunded, often bypassed entirely through political connections, or greased over with a few thousand rupees.
If Sri Lanka adopted even a fraction of the UK's Health and Safety at Work Act, public transport would grind to a halt overnight. Because nearly all current practices violate its most basic principles: protect the worker, and protect the public.
Drivers work beyond humane hours. Conductors push passengers onto already-overcrowded buses. Children cling to rear ladders during rush hour. Safety is not an afterthought—it’s not a thought at all.
“Every time I put my daughter on a school bus, I wonder if I’ll see her again,” says Anoja Perera, a mother from Kurunegala. “That’s the reality. It’s Russian roulette on wheels.”
Sri Lanka has no centralised public grievance hotline for public transport. If you’re on a bus where the driver is overtaking on blind curves or if the conductor is verbally abusing passengers, your only recourse is to get off—or scream and pray.
There is no reporting mechanism, no publicly accessible blacklisting of dangerous drivers or vehicles. Complaints, when made, are lodged with individual bus depots or private operators—who have no interest in punishing those who bring them profit.
A proposed transport safety hotline by the previous government never materialised beyond a press release. Now, there are murmurs within the National People’s Power (NPP) administration about establishing a nationwide transport ombudsman and digital complaint portal—but for now, silence remains the only feedback.
Even modern safety standards like seat belts, emergency exits, or speed governors remain optional accessories rather than mandatory fixtures. Buses are routinely overloaded, not just with passengers, but with precariously stacked goods.
And when crashes happen—as they do with alarming regularity—the victims are usually low-income earners with no recourse to legal redress. Compensation is minimal. Accountability is absent.
The Ministry of Transport’s annual accident reports are themselves a grim joke. One recent report categorised multiple-fatality incidents as "minor mechanical failure," with no follow-up action taken.
The solution isn’t just new buses, though God knows the nation needs them. What Sri Lanka requires is a complete overhaul—a rethinking of its transport culture from the ground up.
Here are six simple reforms that would save lives immediately:
Mandatory MOT-style inspections for all commercial passenger vehicles every six months.
A digital public reporting hotline, with enforcement authority and real-time bus tracking to monitor driver behaviour.
Enforced driver work-hour regulations, akin to those used in the EU or India, to prevent fatigue-based accidents.
Annual safety certifications for private bus operators, tied to insurance eligibility and licensing.
An independent national transport safety regulator, free from political interference, modelled after Ofcom or the UK’s Health and Safety Executive.
A zero-tolerance policy for bribery and corruption within traffic policing, starting with body cameras and digitised penalty systems.
Implementing these reforms will not be easy. Powerful private bus unions, entrenched corruption, and political patronage stand in the way. Every past administration has flirted with reform, only to back down at the first hint of union protests.
But the NPP government, buoyed by a fresh electoral mandate and a commitment to structural reform, has a narrow window in which it can act boldly. With the right political will, it could be the administration remembered not just for slogans, but for saving lives.
Transport Minister Anura Gunaratne, in a recent statement, said: “The current system is unacceptable. We are considering international models to guide reform.” Words are promising. Actions, however, are overdue.
This is not just a domestic issue. As Sri Lanka opens its doors to tourism and international investment, its chaotic transport system becomes a point of global embarrassment. Foreign travel advisories already warn visitors about “unpredictable driving behaviour” and “unsafe public buses.” No nation can market itself as a modern destination with 1970s bus safety.
Human rights organisations and international road safety coalitions have begun raising the alarm. If reforms are not swiftly enacted, Sri Lanka may find itself not just shamed, but sanctioned by global bodies concerned with transport standards and public safety.
Sri Lanka’s roads don’t need to be death traps. Its buses don’t need to be coffins on wheels. Its people don’t need to live in fear every time they travel. But change requires more than tearful funerals and token press conferences.
It requires courage. It requires competence. And above all, it requires a state that values the lives of its citizens over the convenience of its cronies.
The road to safety is long and uphill. But unlike most Sri Lankan buses, it’s a journey worth making—with brakes that work.
-By LeN Colombo Correspondent
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by (2025-05-12 18:15:10)
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