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by FACTOTUM

Life is being mercifully spared in the former battle zones. The kith and kin of the soldiery are spending restful days and nights as a result. Everyone from clergyman to layman across the borders of ethnicity are praying. If not they are at least hopeful that a no-killing scenario will hold.

Now, as if to step into a vacuum caused by this ceasefire, maniacs at the wheel of varying motor vehicles have taken it in their stride to provide the headlines by the gruesome notching up of road accidents most of them taking life and reducing some others to permanent loss or disfigurement of limb. On Wednesday the 'Daily News' reported in its lead story that "On Monday alone 10 persons were killed and 43 injured in road accidents. Earlier on Friday night a Catholic priest riding his motorcycle was knocked down by a lorry on Baseline Road..."

We do not have a breakdown of the vocations and professions of those killed and injured on Monday but it is clear that even the clergy are not spared visitations of calamity.Of course as always there is a huge hue and cry right now calling on the authorities to do something to arrest the trend. A host of measures are being evaluated ranging from suspending driving licences of errant drivers to catching prospective drivers young at school and orienting them to road rules and initiating them to correct driving techniques.

As always there is an element of human error in the occurrence of these accidents. Mechanical failure of vehicles can be reduced to a minimum. Road worthiness of vehicles are generally scrutinised annually when vehicle owners go for their insurance. Here it is the owner of the vehicles of older vintage that have their vehicle inspected. All that is well and good. An increase in the fines may act as a deterrent. The final punishment could be the withdrawal of the licence so that the killer is taken off the roads.

But what must have escaped the notice of the layman and the specialist in this regard has been highlighted by a medical doctor who has cited a few cases to buttress his argument that among a host of reasons that contribute to the incidence of irresponsible driving, one of them is generally overlooked or down played- medical reasons. This good doctor has brought up a few instances to illustrate his point which deserve repetition today since the article in ours last Sunday may have been missed by those concerned and other desultory readers.

A few instances shared with the reader by this doctor are as follows: 'A Colombo District Judge driving his car along Reid Avenue developed an epileptic fit, lost consciousness and crashed headlong into an oncoming bus. Three people died in this incident.' Could this tragedy have been averted?

To cull another tragic happening caused by medical reasons 'A six-year-old child standing on the pavement was knocked down by a private bus driven by a person suffering from weakness of his arm due to poliomyelitis. The driver was charged for reckless driving but the fact that he was suffering from poliomyelitis and weakness of the arm was known only unofficially'. In other words he was let loose on the unsuspecting public again to inflict his reckless driving.In another instance the doctor refers to the case of a driver who had been medically condemned by the CTB but was hired by a private bus owner. The driver did not take long to cause the resultant havoc. In an accident with a tractor this condemned man accounted for the life of the tractor driver.

So, it is blatantly clear that a scheme to keep a tab on the physical and mental fitness of drivers has to be set in place. An age bar can be brought into operation. In the instance of ageing, clearly all of them must be made to submit to medical check-ups and produce a certificate of competence from a medical person.To put the record straight then, it is not only an increasing volume of traffic on the roads without a corresponding increase in road capacity, speeding, jay walking and callous disregard of road rules that produce fiends on the roads. The physical and mental frame up of drivers has a lot to do with these accidents and the sooner this aspect of it is gone into and remedied the better. The numbers saved in the former war ravaged areas may be meaningless (in a sense) if corresponding numbers are laid low on our roads.

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