Wednesday, July 02, 2008 Carvajal: Lethal combination By Orlando P. Carvajal Break Point
IT is not really sea travel that kills more people but land travel.
Sea travel every now and then gets the limelight because the relatively fewer accidents usually involve more people. Road travel, however, kills a few every day in all parts of the country and accounts for a lot more fatalities, thanks but no thanks to the lethal combination of government incompetence, irresponsibility and corruption.
In all my driving, I still have to see a highway patrolman stop a driver for over speeding. Yet reckless drivers abound who over speed and weave their way in and out of traffic. Who is responsible for putting order and discipline in our highways? Nobody, it would seem.
How many public utility vehicles and buses run on bald tires that can explode and cause an accident any minute? And how many have been killed by wayward cargo trucks with defective brakes? Why are these coffins on wheels allowed to run in our streets?
When I renewed my motorcycle’s registration, I dutifully complied and passed the surprisingly very thorough inspection of brake lights, signal lights, headlights, side view mirrors, etc. But once on the road you start to wonder what the inspection was for since you see so many without brake lights, without signal lights and without side view mirrors. How did they pass inspection? And why are they allowed to operate?
Furthermore, small motorbikes are driven at any speed by their owners.
They pass you on either side often occupying the opposite lane and forcing motorists to make emergency maneuvers to avoid a collision. The motorcycle is known to kill a lot of young people in the Philippines. Yet it is lamentable that one cannot see the slightest hint of an attempt on the part of authorities to do something about the chaotic driving habits of motorcyclists.
The trisikads among us are veritable accidents waiting to happen. If we must allow them, they must at least be required to have a reflector so they can be seen at night. Or else, they must not be allowed to operate after dark. Just who is responsible for regulating the operation of trisikads?
Then you have the ultimate in living dangerously and that is the practice of allowing people to rope off a lane or two of a main city street (not just a side street) to have a wake or a novena or a fiesta activity. One sleepy driver’s miscue and you have your accident. Who is allowing this stupidly unsafe practice?
Bureaucratic negligence has made travel in this country, by land or sea, unsafe. How many more will have to die before our officials accept the responsibility, develop the competence and shun the corruption, the lethal combination that is putting our people directly in harm’s way?
