Press briefing of Cabinet Decision taken on 2021-05-03

Declaring a Road Safety Week to draw special attention of the society for minimizing road traffic accidents

- At present, between 8-10 people lose their lives daily because of road traffic accidents and the majority of them are males. Their dependents become extremely helpless due to this reason and it shows an increasing trend in that number year by year. In the last year, there had been 2,023 fatal road accidents and out of them, 2,114 people have succumbed to death. 963 of them are motorcycle related accidents which have caused 987 deaths. It has been reported that around 500 deaths occur annually due to road accidents caused by three wheelers and lorries as well. Taking into consideration these matters, the National Council for Road Safety has drawn its attention to implement a National Road Safety Week from 21st November, which is the World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims, and to take necessary measures to raise awareness among the Public and Private Institutes, students, drivers and the General Public on reducing the occurrence of road traffic accidents. As such, the proposal made by the Minister of Transport to declare a National Road Safety Week to be effective from Sunday 21st November 2021 and to continue such a week annually in every November in future, was approved by the Cabinet.