Driving Perceptions: Gender, Media, and Responsibility

On the recent Poya day 6th of October 2025, three female devotees walking along the road tragically passed away due to a traffic accident.

I saw that Minister Bimal had shared a critique regarding how the incident was reported in a newspaper. Since I’m not someone who thinks in such a refined way, I just reacted to the video with a laughing emoji. But since I felt it was not enough, so I added a comment too.

Honestly, I find these kinds of attitudes about divisions and labels quite hilarious but not funny.

While it’s fine for a Sinhalese person to refer him as a Sinhalese, I’ve noticed that when the same thing happens to someone from another ethnicity, it often sparks backlash.

In truth, highlighting such identifiers should only happen when they’re relevant to the context. For example, if a foreigner is involved in an accident, mentioning that detail isn’t meant to insult them, but it’s simply an additional noteworthy fact. Similarly, saying “female driver” here is just an extra detail.

Compared to the past, although more women in Sri Lanka now hold driving licenses (around 1.1m), they still represent a very small percentage of total driving license holders (more than 12m). It's clear that less than 10% of all license holders are women. If we look back to around 2010, the situation was even more dismal, and it was barely around 1%. I believe that once this figure reaches around 35%, such identifiers will naturally fade away.

On the other hand, our experiences with female drivers haven’t always been satisfiable. To improve this situation, they may need more training and a better understanding of traffic laws. Especially, I’ve noticed that some women expect priority on the road simply because of their gender (similarly as in the normal life) in driving and parking. Often, when parking, they don’t consider the inconvenience caused to other vehicles (though some men do this too, even though less frequently). So, the responsibility to correct these shortcomings lies in their hands and minds.

Unfortunately, my thinking isn’t advanced enough to adjust my thoughts according to something about to happen in the future. So I personally don’t think the journalist did anything wrong there. However, if Minister Bimal is being sensitive because the government has plans to recruit female drivers in the near future, then that’s a different story and quite interesting.

If there’s a way to develop both the knowledge and attitudes of new license applicants (and even existing ones), that would be truly worthwhile.

* Image was generated by MS - Copilot.