Police have named the passengers who fall outside the mandatory seat belt requirement on expressways, three days after the rule began to be enforced.
Deputy Inspector General of Police W.P.J. Senadheera said the requirement does not apply to young children, or to passengers below four and a half feet in height, under the terms of the relevant Gazette notification. Passengers who have been medically advised not to wear a seat belt are also exempt.
Officers will take those circumstances into account when enforcing the rule and grant the exemptions where they apply, Senadheera said, as reported by Daily Mirror.
He nonetheless urged drivers to make sure that children and passengers who cannot be belted for medical reasons are carried safely, particularly on expressways.
The rule the exemptions attach to
Seat belts became compulsory for all passengers — front and rear — on Sri Lanka’s expressways from midnight on 18 September, after the Transport Ministry ruled out any further grace period. The height and medical carve-outs are the first public detail police have given on how the Gazette’s scope is limited in practice.
Two figures the police statement does not give: what counts as a “young” child, and what documentation, if any, a medically exempt passenger is expected to carry. The height threshold — four and a half feet, or roughly 137 cm — is close to the point at which an adult lap-and-diagonal belt stops sitting correctly across a child’s chest and hips, which is the usual engineering basis for such a cut-off, though the police statement does not say so.
The RDA’s early read
Separately, Road Development Authority Director General Anuradha Hettiarachchi said casualties in expressway crashes have fallen since the rule took effect.
He pointed to the multi-vehicle pile-up between the Galanigama and Dodangoda interchanges on the Southern Expressway, in which ten people were taken to hospital, arguing the casualty count was held down because passengers were belted.
Hettiarachchi said expressway crashes have risen in recent days because of the wet weather, and named speeding, poor lane discipline and following too closely as the main causes. He also said vehicles that are not roadworthy have been seen entering expressways.
The RDA gave no accident or casualty numbers to support the claim of a decline, and no comparison period. Both reports come from Daily Mirror; no other verified newsroom carried either statement.