Abstract:
Road accidents have been on the upward trend the world over including Sri Lanka. According to Traffic Police Statistics, about one hundred road accidents are reported daily in the island, of which, about five to six are fatal. This state of affairs, particularly relating to Sri Lanka could be attributed to several factors, some of which would seem to be peculiar to this country. Among them are the heavy influx of motor vehicles. (particularly after liberalisation of imports), the population explosion, increased employment From Table 1.1 it is seen that the cumulative vehicle population has increased from 156, 334 in 1974 to 1,244,653 in 1995 on an average of 10.4o/o per annum. The ESCAP region covering Asia and the Pacific is one of the fastest developing regions in the world. Since the mid 1980's the rate of increase of GDP in developing ESCAP countries has been about double the global rates. In the 1985-1991 period, the share of the world trade of ESCAP countries increased from 40.0% in 1985 to 47.2% in 1991 (Turner, 1993) resulting in increasing traffic on roads.
