Colombo (News 1st): From April 13th to 18th, 31 accidents were reported claiming 42 lives, while the most tragic accident resulted in the death of 10 members of the same family in Mahiyangana.

A performance audit by the Auditor General on “Functions performed by Government entities on road safety in Sri Lanka” identified a series of road engineering defects that resulted in an increase of road accidents.

According to 2015 statistics, 368 road accidents took place in 293 places, as pedestrian crossing were situated, nearest to the bus stand intersection.

The report adds, there were 355 cases where roadsigns at the pedestrian crossings were not clearly indicated and as such 196 road accidents had taken place.

The performance audit revealed 108 road accidents took place where electric lamps were inoperative at night.

The report also observed that the road network in Sri Lanka has not improved compared to the increase in vehicle registration.

While vehicle registrations had increased from 3.9 million in 2010 to 7.2 million in 2017, the road network, which was 12,019km in 2010, had merely increased to 12,220 km in 2017.

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