Friday 19th February, 2021 Police Spokesman DIG Ajith Rohana has alerted the public to an alarming increase in killer road accidents recently. During the past seven days, as many as 23 people have died in road mishaps, he says. Prangs, near misses and the attendant chaos on roads have become the order of the day, again. This may be taken as an indication that the country has returned to normal earlier than expected. During the pandemic-related lockdowns and travel restrictions, there was a sharp drop in road fatalities, which began to increase gradually as the country limped back to normalcy. Road accidents snuff out more lives than coronavirus does in this country. Deaths due to road mishaps average eight a day. Not even the war destroyed lives at this rate. The National Council for Road Safety has revealed that 2,641 fatal road accidents caused as many as 2,829 deaths in 2019, when 10,691 mishaps occurred. There were 776 pedestrians, 1,162 motorcyclists, 282 drivers, 405 passengers and 204 cyclists and 10 others among the victims. There is a war of sorts against the runaway virus, which must be stopped, but there has been no such national effort to prevent road accidents. Why?