Last year 2811 persons died due to road accidents and of them 1800 were men who died driving motor cycles or three wheelers.

Of this number 70% are low income earning or self employed people with families which will pose a big problem to society in the future as there will be fatherless children and widowers without any income to feed the families.

In most instances when a person faces an accident the helmet is thrown away, damaged or the straps are broken which results in major head injuries and thereby death said Dr.Sisira Kodagoda, Chairman National Council for road Safety.

He said there are 6.3 million registered vehicles and of them 3.3 million are motor cycles,1.5 million are three wheelers.

In most instances the people who die are less than 35 years and who contributors to the labour market are.  After much deliberation the Consumer Affairs Authority decided to prohibit the sale of helmets without the SLS mark. Sri Lanka Standards Institute gave a period of one year to obtain the SLS mark to importers of helmets and now five producers have asked for SLS.

Senior Deputy Director SLSI Aruna S. Dewage said that persons who are using helmets can continue to use their helmets while full face helmets have also not been prohibited.

A helmet should have the shell, regiform and SLS certificate has to be obtained for type B helmets.

British standard is applicable for the visor at present but we will introduce a Sri Lankan standard in the future.

We have instructed the three-wheeler manufacturing companies to manufacture a higher quality three wheeler said Dr. Kodagoda.

He said that they are educating motor cycle riders on the use of a protective helmet and once the SLS  certified protective helmets come to the market we will have an information sheet on all three languages.