At least 13 persons were injured after a bus collided with a three-wheeler in the Galassa area in Nagoda some 43 kilometres south of the commercial capital Colombo on Wednesday morning, police said.
Initial investigations have revealed that the bus loaded with some 60 passengers had swerved off the road and rammed into a road side wall in order to avert hitting the three-wheeler that had given a wrong road signal, police said.
They added that the bus had been plying from Mapalagama to Colombo when the incident took place.
The injured were rushed to a nearby Government hospital and their injuries were of a minor nature, according to police and health workers.
The Sri Lankan authorities are facing an uphill task in curbing the rise in road accidents where there are some 8.1 million registered vehicles on the road for a population of just 21 million.
The bulk of the traffic violators are known to be three-wheel operators, bus drivers and motorcyclists according to statistics available with the Police.
Since the start of this year alone some 115 children had died in road fatalities from a total of 300 or more, according to police.
In the previous year there were a total 19,000 road accidents of which 2371 were fatalities.
