After the worst bus crash in decades, which left 23 people dead, Sri Lanka will use artificial intelligence to monitor bus drivers and require seat belts on public transportation, according to a government minister’s statement on Wednesday ( May 14 ).
Some of the world’s most dangerous bridges are located in the South Eastern country, which has an average of 3, 000 mortality periodically.
Transport Minister Bimal Rathnayake told reporters in Colombo that seat belts may be required on public transportation starting in June, while buses will be equipped with drivers monitoring systems starting next season.
It came after a crowded van carrying lots of Buddhist travelers slammed into a cliff on Sunday.
According to Rathnayake, the changes are intended to “instruct drivers to create a better moving culture and improve safety standards.”
” We will make pilot study systems powered by AI required on all buses starting next year, and we will also add them to all long-distance trucks as well.”
The minister claimed that the cause of Sunday’s fall in the tea-growing mountainous area of Kotmale was still being looked into, but that two more fatalities had resulted, raising the death toll to 23.
According to Rathnayake, 54 of the passengers were taken to the hospital, Rathnayake added, noting that initial investigations had revealed no clear evidence of pilot error.
The day before, another pilot reported a concern with the bus’s steering wheel, but the management claimed it was fixed.
The deadliest incident to occur off a mountain road in Sri Lanka on Sunday was the one since April 2005.
About 20 more people than the state-owned vehicle could accommodate, or 77.
13 people died in a private bus’s fall in Passara, about 100 kilometers west of the scene of Sunday’s accident, in March 2021.