Traffic courtesy at Nawam Mawatha

I happened to be one of the few hundred vehicle owners leaving the EPF Car Park located at Nawam Mawatha on a drizzly evening this week. Being a Non-resident of SL, I was saddened to see the grind that most people had to undergo with this traffic chaos on a daily basis. But, what shocked me was not the mere fact that it took me 1 hr and 19 minutes to travel a distance of 1.2 Km, but the road sense behaviour of the so called educated professionals/Senior executives of Colombo 2, trying to go ahead by any means, even if it meant running down pedestrians or blatantly driving down the wrong side of the road.

For the unknowns, Nawam Mawatha up to Sir James Pieris Mawatha happens to be a single file traffic lane and if one vehicle travels (one car, a blue Honda Accord 2007 model did, Number noted not published) on the wrong side of the road the result is an unending traffic block which takes unnecessary time and hot tempers to clear.

I was a witness to this type of blatant disregard of traffic rules behaviour by citizens driving vehicles who happen to be very senior members of our business community and senior staff of the many well known companies housed in the numerous buildings at Nawam Mawatha.

This letter is a gentle citizen’s reminder to everyone to ‘Please think of others as you sit behind the wheel’ as like you, the vehicle driver next to you, after all is also trying to get home as soon as he/she can to his loved ones.

Dilup Talaiver