Religious idols adorn dashboards, symbolic of the faith many rely on for safe passage on roads that have become the modern killing fields in a country where 60,000 people have died in three decades of ethnic bloodshed.
"In our country, road accidents have claimed more lives now than during the war (between troops and Tamil Tiger rebels)," said Lucky Peiris, director traffic administration and road safety at police headquarters. "That itself shows the state of our driving."
Most drivers pray three times and offer incense and flowers to a multitude of deities before venturing out, but Peiris says "discourteous driving" and failure to follow traffic rules is the main cause of accidents.
Sri Lankan drivers have idiosyncrasies that are typically lost on foreigners, who often lose their way on the poorly lit, nameless, signless and dangerously pot-holed roads.
If a driver flashes his head lights at an oncoming vehicle in Sri Lanka, for example, it is not a sign of giving way - as it is in many other countries. Rather it means "over my dead body - I am not giving way at all", says Peiris. The simultaneous flashing of left and right indicators elsewhere signals a hazard warning to other motorists; here it means a driver intends to carry straight on, without turning.
But it is buses that account for the majority of horrific accidents on Sri Lanka's roads.
On Saturday, 11 people were killed in the south when a bus collided head on with a van.
Earlier this month, two schoolgirls and a woman were fatally knocked down at a pedestrian crossing by a bus with failing brakes - ironically during a "courteous driver week" campaign.
Last year, 2,096 people were killed in 1,933 fatal accidents out of a total of 60,000 accidents reported.
The medical care for accident victims, damage to property and vehicles involved in road accidents in 2001 was estimated by authorities to have cost 105 million dollars, or nearly one percent of GDP.
Peiris notes that while the Tamil Tiger rebels' separatist conflict now sees only a few isolated killings, the highway toll continues to tick over.
Choking the country's 11,650 kilometres (7,280 miles) of highways, there was a 60 percent jump in the number of imported vehicles last year - to about 2.2 million - but no corresponding increase in traffic policing.
Peiris also stressed that drivers responsible for fatal accidents in Sri Lanka tended to get off lightly, with drink drivers usually being fined about 15 dollars and prosecutions rare.
Determined to force the system to turn the corner, Peiris says he aims to press for prison terms for offenders to offer some sort of deterrent.
"We also need new technology like speed-cameras and video systems to control traffic," Peiris said.
Until then drivers will probably continue looking to more spiritual saviours.
A gold-plated Buddha and a silver Jesus do the job for taxi driver Paul Anthony. "You must have these if you want to be safe on our roads," he said.