Kotmale bus disaster

We do not apologize for running several articles in this week's issue of our newspaper on the bus tragedy at Garandi Ella last week that took 23 lives and left many more injured.

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The survivors included a baby girl who early reports said had been protected by her mother, shielding her against the pre-dawn cold, with her own body before rescuers reached her. This was corrected with later reports clarifying that it was not the baby's mother, but a fellow-passenger on the bus, who was responsible for this act of kindness despite suffering a dislocated shoulder herself.

The scale of the latest tragedy obviously merits the most intensive coverage and, more importantly, preventive action to ensure that road fatalities that occur with frightening regularity on our roads are reduced to the barest minimum.

The articles we run today range from a deeply researched piece, replete with facts and figures over a period of many years, by an Irishman, Michael Patrick O'Leary, who has been living here with his Lankan wife since 2002. The couple, coincidentally, lived not far from the scene of a similar accident when a privately-owned bus crashed into a canyon near Passara on the Bandarawela-Poonagala Road killing 10 and injuring 18. The writer says the driver has been speeding without regard for the terrain and foggy weather, A 16-year old girl due to sit her 'O' Levels that December was one of the victims. The second, a letter to the editor by a regular contributor who began his working life in the then CTB, a third from an engineering don from the Peradeniya University and a final piece from a retired public servant who says he's no engineer but has long experience driving and riding vehicles.