Sula: School Safety

Sunday, July 17, 2011

THE SIGHT on Friday high noon was gruesome, cruel and savage.

The body of a young boy lay crookedly twisted and crumpled in the middle of MacArthur Highway, lying in a pool of blood – his own – his brain scattered in gut-wrenching gray globs on the asphalt pavement.

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The monster that did it stopped a few feet away past the lifeless body: a huge quarry truck that left heavy skid marks on the scene of crime, telltale of the violent way it happened. The truck could only have been speeding, probably even trying to avoid the boy or something. But the truck was moving fast and heavy, the momentum and size was beyond the driver’s control or, worse, his consciousness.

As I passed by on my way to lunch, I saw school children of San Isidro Elementary School watch in horror on the edge of the road, on the edge of their own frail humanity probably terrified and violated as well by the gory sight of a classmate, alive and well a few hours ago, now dead and mangled like a street cat.

The look on the boy’s face, whose skull was flattened, resembled the oversized head of a caricatured fish on an ancient Egyptian relief – eyes bulging and the mouth wide open as if trying to call a name, his mother or father or brother or friend – was heartbreaking.

It was a scene that could incite any loving parent to commit murder.

I wondered, as I drove slowly as two policemen frantically waved the passing motorists quickly out of accident area, where was everybody that could have saved the boy, anybody that was supposed to take care of the boy and his schoolmates from harm like that?

It’s about time something was drastically done to prevent the same scene from happening. Surely, something CAN be done.

Safety summit, anyone?

I can suggest a few helpful measures.

1. Enforce speed limits, especially around school zones.

2. Ban trucks at school zones at specific hours in the morning and afternoon.

3. Assign marshals, policemen or tanods in schools to assist children, especially when crossing, and to watch out for criminal elements preying on them.

4. Where schools are fronting busy roads like MacArthur, it may be safer to redesign the entrance/exit gates that will prevent children from directly spilling into the streets or traffic.

5. Educate children on road safety.

When I was in the US, I saw how schoolchildren were protected. Whenever or wherever a school bus was parked, no vehicle was allowed to pass by it, even if that meant building up traffic all the way to hell. A person in reflectorized uniform and carrying a STOP sign also assisted the kids while crossing. Speed limit signs were also conspicuous while some cops lurked nearby, on the ready to run after a speeding motorist.

(The road rules were so pro-pedestrians they could even walk leisurely, playfully or frivolously while crossing the lanes. You can't harass them by so much as attempting to lurch the car a bit forward. It could land you in jail.)

Simple, doable things.

This wasn’t the first accident for San Isidro Elementary School. Years back, a big tree fell inside the campus. A kid was hurt, I was told, and fortunately not seriously.

That fallen tree and last Friday's accident were similar, in my view, in that they were waiting to happen.

Note: The boy, I gathered, was a transient student from Pangasinan where his remains were brought for appropriate rites and burial.