Tuesday, November 04, 2008 Malig: MNTC’s excuse By Jun A. Malig Cognition
SO IT was “driver error” that caused the fatal All Saints’ Day road accident. What’s new about this?
Didn’t the Manila North Tollways Corp. (MNTC) know that many Filipino drivers, especially those who drive bigger vehicles like trucks and buses, have the tendency to bully slower or lighter vehicles on the road?
Even the NLExpress, official publication of the MNTC’s subsidiary firm Tollways Management Corp. (TMC), has been consistently reporting since day one that the primary cause of vehicular mishaps inside the North Luzon Expensive-way (NLEx) is “miscalculation/driver’s error.”
There’s no denying the fact that many drivers tend to commit errors due to lack of respect for other road users. It’s simply an old trait that Filipino expatriates in other countries often talk about.
This is the precise reason why your parents, brothers, sisters, or friends from the United States or Canada keep on saying they won’t be able to drive a car in the Philippines. They can drive along the roads of foreign countries, sure. But in their home country, where roads, including toll ways, are dominated by fast and furious drivers, they know that their disciplined driving habits won’t suffice.
I almost fell from my seat upon reading in the newspaper Monday morning MNTC’s statement that “NLEx is safe” and that the Nov. 1 Fermina bus-Toyota Revo collision that killed five people was “due to driver error.”
Was the MNTC, along with TMC, trying to wash its hands again?
The fact remains that if only the entire Mabiga to Sta. Inez portion of the toll road has four lanes, undisciplined bus driver Bernardo Santos did not have to take the opposite lane and ram onto the Toyota Revo.
Unfortunately, it seems the MNTC did not consider the glaring Filipino driving habit in making the NLEx a truly safe highway. What it obviously did was simply overlay the long-existing expressway with asphalts, build “high-tech” inconvenient ticket dispensing toll booths that sometimes fail to work, and impose “world-class” road fees.
MNTC’s corporate communication vice president Marlene Ochoa was quoted by a national daily as saying the expressive expressway had passed two safety audits by a Hong Kong-based transport consultant Mott Connel, which “did not recommend the expansion of the road” along the Mabalacat portion of NLEx.
I wonder if this Mott Connel firm knew about the driving habits of Filipinos better than the smart cookies at MNTC and TMC.
It’s a fact, based on Land Transportation Office and police records, that vehicular accidents due to driver errors or due to “unsafe overtaking” occur on narrow roads more than they occur on four-lane highways.
Why? Simple logic would show that fast and furious drivers don’t have to take the opposite lane to pass slower vehicles. All they have to do is to steer the wheel towards the fast lane. It’s a simple common sense, really.
So what’s MNTC’s real reason for not expanding the Mabalacat portion of the NLEx? Was it due to the lack of recommendation from the Mott Connel for the Lopez-controlled firm to do so? I don’t think so.
Methinks it had something to do with cost-cutting vis-à-vis maximizing profits, which is evidently related to MNTC’s illegal policy of collecting P16 toll for a mere two-kilometer Dau to Angeles City distance, which is inconsistent with Toll Regulatory Board-approved NLEx pricing scheme. The same amount of road fee is being imposed from Sta. Inez to Angeles City. Why? Ask Ms Ochoa.
We might be surprised to learn that it was recommended to them by another consultant from Vietnam or somewhere else.
