The Cabinet has approved the creation of national Presidential Road Safety Awards, to be held for the first time this year as a special project under the Road Safety Action Plan 2025–2026.
The awards will recognise individuals, state and private institutions and other organisations judged to have made outstanding contributions to road safety, Hiru News reported. Two tiers are planned — merit awards and Presidential awards.
An annual fixture tied to a global remembrance day
The government intends to repeat the ceremony annually, building on the results of this year’s inaugural event, and to schedule it to coincide with the International Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims, which falls on the third Sunday of November. That places the first ceremony in mid-November 2026.
Beyond the awards themselves, the stated aims are to direct public attention toward road safety, encourage responsible behaviour on the roads and increase public participation in road safety work.
The proposal came from the Minister of Transport, Highways and Urban Development — a portfolio held by Bimal Rathnayake. Hiru did not name the minister in its report.
The enforcement side of the same plan
The awards are the incentive-based arm of a road safety programme that has so far been mostly enforcement-led. Police recorded more than 271,000 helmet-related cases in the first half of the year under the same action plan, as reported in August, and Cabinet decisions announced at Tuesday’s same briefing included a seat-belt requirement on expressways from 19 September.
No budget for the awards, selection criteria, or the composition of the panel that will choose winners was disclosed.
