Sri Lanka Police draw flak for harassing Four-Wheel Drive owners

• Sri Lanka's 4x4 volunteers saved thousands during Cyclone Ditwah; now the Police are fining them for vehicles that made it possible

By Riyad Riffai

When Cyclone Ditwah tore across all 25 districts of Sri Lanka at the end of November 2025, dumping up to 500mm of rain in three days, it was not only soldiers and Disaster Management Centre (DMC) crews wading into the floodwaters. Long before formal relief convoys could be organised, a loose, self-funded network of 4X4 (Four Wheel Drive) owners was already moving, rescuing stranded families off rooftops, ferrying medical supplies through washed-out roads, and reaching villages that ambulances and army trucks simply could not get to.

This is not a new phenomenon. It is the same volunteer instinct that sent jeep owners into the wreckage after the 2004 tsunami, and the same network that Sri Lanka's Ministry of Defence, the Sarvodaya movement and independent 4x4 owners were folded into during Ditwah›s search and rescue phase, filling gaps that formal agencies "struggled to access." It is a pattern disaster researchers now describe as a rapid response system capable of mobilising within hours, running almost entirely on volunteer fuel, volunteer time, and privately modified vehicles.

That last detail, privately modified, is where the trouble starts.

A rescue vehicle, by definition, is a modified vehicle

A stock, showroom spec Jeep or a pickup truck is not built to cross a flooded paddy field, climb a collapsed embankment, or tow a boat trailer through mud. The vehicles that make Sri Lanka’s informal rescue fleet effective are the ones that have been lifted, re-tyred, winch fitted, snorkel-equipped and reinforced, precisely the features the law was not written to accommodate.

In May 2026, Sri Lanka Police confirmed a nationwide crackdown on “illegally modified” vehicles, invoking the Motor Traffic Act’s requirement that a vehicle be maintained in a condition that does not cause “danger, inconvenience, annoyance or injury” to other road users. The stated targets were legitimate road-safety hazards: unauthorised flashing lights, non standard horns, blacked out structural changes, and vehicles without valid fitness certificates  several of which have been linked to serious bus accidents. Police also reactivated Section 74 of the Motor Traffic Ordinance to go after noise pollution from modified exhausts.

The problem is that the same broadly worded provisions, “alter the manufacturer’s original structure or appearance without legal approval”, sweep up the suspension lifts, off-road tyres, roof racks, auxiliary lighting and winches that turn an ordinary pickup into a functioning rescue asset. There is currently no separate registration category, fitness-certification pathway, or legal exemption in Sri Lanka’s vehicle laws for accredited disaster-response vehicles. A jeep modified to save lives during a flood is, in the eyes of the Motor Traffic Act, functionally identical to a jeep modified to look intimidating on the road.

For the volunteers who spent Ditwah’s worst days towing boats and winching families to safety, then found themselves facing fines or vehicle impoundment for the very features that made that possible, the message lands as a simple one: the law does not distinguish between a hazard and a lifeline.

Why this should worry the Government more than the volunteers

Sri Lanka’s formal disaster-response capacity is not a bottomless resource. The DMC has previously faced its own scrutiny over equipment procured for disaster response sitting idle or unusable rather than deployed, and the scale of Ditwah, which affected an estimated 1.7 million people, displaced over 200,000, and killed close to 400, stretched the Ministry of Defence, Police and DMC to the point that Sri Lanka formally requested and received international search and rescue assistance, including Indian Air Force helicopters and NDRF teams. The country’s under strain, debt burdened state has repeatedly relied on exactly the kind of informal, self-mobilising volunteer capacity that 4x4 owners represent to fill the gap between when a disaster hits and when formal agencies can fully deploy.

That volunteer capacity is not guaranteed to keep showing up. Anecdotally, within the 4x4 and off road community, the sentiment hardening after this year’s enforcement drive is that turning up to a flood zone now carries a real risk of a fine, a court date, or a vehicle impounded and pulled off the road, on top of the fuel, time and equipment already donated for free. If that calculus tips far enough, the rational response for an individual owner is to stay home next time. Multiply that across the hundreds of vehicles that mobilise during a major weather event, and the state loses at zero cost to itself, a rescue fleet it could never afford to procure and maintain directly.

The timing could not be worse

Sri Lanka is currently watching a strengthening El Niño with growing concern. NOAA data cited in mid 2026 put the probability of a very strong El Niño event between November 2026 and January 2027 at 63%, with sea surface temperatures already confirming a strong event was underway by mid year. Meteorologists and climate researchers are warning of a now-familiar two phase pattern for the island, a drier than normal Southwest Monsoon followed by the risk of an enhanced Northeast Monsoon bringing heavier rainfall and flood risk to the north and east later in the year, the same October to January window in which Ditwah struck. The Department of Meteorology and independent forecasters alike have flagged reduced reservoir levels, hydropower strain, agricultural disruption and elevated flood risk as live possibilities before the year is out.

In other words, the next major weather event that could require exactly the kind of volunteer 4x4 response Ditwah relied on is not a distant, hypothetical risk. It is realistically months away. This is not the moment to be alienating the people who show up first.

What reform could look like

Nobody in the 4x4 community is arguing that vehicle safety standards should not exist, or that genuinely dangerous, unroadworthy modifications deserve a pass. Buses with structurally compromised modifications have killed people on Sri Lankan roads, and the police’s underlying road safety mandate is legitimate. But a blanket, decades old Motor Traffic Act framework that treats a decibel boosted exhaust and a flood rescue winch and bumper, tyres, snorkel, roof rack, etc. as the same category of offence is not fit for purpose in a country that now leans on volunteer off-road capacity every time a cyclone or monsoon flood overwhelms formal services.

A workable middle path already has precedent elsewhere. A formal accreditation or registration scheme, potentially run jointly by the DMC and the police, that recognises vehicles belonging to registered 4x4 rescue clubs or individuals with a track record of disaster response, subject to a safety inspection rather than a blanket ban on modification. Clubs such as i-CERT (the 4x4 Community Emergency Response Team), which has an established working relationship with the DMC, are the obvious template for what an accreditation pathway could look like at scale.

One concrete version of this. i-CERT could work directly with the Registrar of Motor Vehicles (RMV) to design a technical certification standard for rescue oriented modifications, suspension lifts, all terrain/mud tyres, winches, snorkels, auxiliary lighting and roof racks, inspected and signed off against a published safety checklist rather than judged ad hoc at a roadblock. A vehicle that passes would be registered under that standard, giving police an objective, checkable basis to distinguish a certified rescue vehicle from an unsafe or purely cosmetic modification.

Paired with that, the RMV could introduce a new licence endorsement or category specifically for drivers of certified modified vehicles, similar in spirit to the additional categories already required for heavy vehicles or three wheelers, covering the handling characteristics particular to lifted, off-road capable 4x4s (altered centre of gravity, extended braking distances, water fording limits). This would give volunteer drivers a legitimate, recognised status on the road, give the RMV and police a paper trail to check against, and give the DMC a pre-vetted, pre-trained pool of drivers and vehicles it could call on with confidence during a disaster, rather than relying on an entirely informal network as it does today.

Without some version of that compromise an RMV backed modification standard paired with a dedicated licence category, built in partnership with the community that actually operates these vehicles, Sri Lanka risks solving a road safety problem by quietly dismantling already present and functioning disaster response capability it cannot afford to lose, just as the weather most likely to test it again is bearing down on the island.