POOR Danilo Cojo. The 47-year-old driver was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Just before dawn last Sunday, the prime mover he was driving figured in an accident on the Cebu South Coastal Road at the South Road Properties (SRP). Five persons were killed. Cojo was on his way to Pier 3 in Cebu City to deliver cement from the City of Naga.
It was not determined if Cojo was speeding, but it was apparent that the other vehicle, driven by victim Rustico Bas, was. According to traffic investigators, there was no sign that Bas stepped on the brake right before impact. In other words, it happened so fast that Bas didn’t have time to react.
His sedan swerved and slammed into Cojo’s truck, which happened to be in the opposite lane. Cojo said he saw Bas’s sedan zigzagging on its way to Talisay City. It just didn’t occur to him that it would leap over the center island.
Because of that, Cojo, his family’s sole breadwinner, is behind bars.
“If there is a death, it’s the prerogative of the investigator to detain the driver until the authorities determine who was at fault,” Land Transportation Office (LTO) 7 Director Arnel Tancinco told Sun.Star Cebu.
Let’s see… Bas swerved to the opposite lane, crossing the center island in the process, and hit Cojo’s prime mover. I guess it doesn’t take a genius to figure out who was at fault there.
And I think the victims’ families are aware of that, too, since they are willing to settle the matter amicably. But because no one was around to represent Owen Juinio, one of the victims, at the meeting in the office of the Traffic Patrol Group, Cojo will remain detained in the Parian Police Station, where he won’t be able to provide for his wife and their three children. Not until Juinio’s siblings, who are reportedly all in Manila, can be contacted and show up to execute an affidavit of desistance against Cojo anyway.
Cojo’s employer has already offered P150,000 to the victims’ families.
In an earlier interview, Cojo told Sun.Star Cebu he has never hit any car or human being in his more than 20 years in the business.
He also said he had only run over two dogs--one in Davao del Norte in the 1990s and the other in Minglanilla last year. (Just don’t mention frogs, though. I don’t know what he has against amphibians but he simply has no regard for them, admitting that he has lost track of how many he has killed.)
Still, it’s safe to say that Cojo is a victim of circumstance. And it’s a shame that authorities are falling back on a technicality to keep an innocent man in jail. After all, Tancinco did say it’s the investigator’s prerogative to release Cojo. Then use that prerogative.
The poor man had already apologized to the victims’ families. “Pasayloon lang ta ko. Wa man to gituyo (I hope they forgive me. It was an accident).” What more do they want from him?
In response to last Sunday’s accident, Mayor Michael Rama called on the Department of Public Works and Highways and the LTO to make the south coastal road safer for the driving public.
The two agencies can do this by installing more traffic signs and by deploying enforcers in the area 24/7, the mayor said.
No amount of traffic signs or enforcers, though, can stop vehicles driven by drivers under the influence of liquor or drugs from leaping over center islands and slamming into opposing traffic.
Also, I don’t think local drivers are used to open wide roads. Most often than not, they’re stuck in traffic, forced to drive at a snail’s pace. There’s nowhere else they can rev their engines and drive with reckless abandon except on the south coastal road.
For some, though, that drive becomes their last.