Cebu City Transportation Office chief Raquel Arce has again aired concerns over road accidents, specifically warning against motorcycle drivers who violate traffic rules at night or early dawn when no law enforcers are on duty.
The warning is not without basis, as videos of motorcycle accidents have in fact flooded our social media accounts lately. Without the protective buffer sections of a car’s body to absorb crash energy during accidents, motorcycle drivers often find themselves at the losing end of destructive collisions.
Incidentally, May is officially designated as National Land Transportation Road Safety Month. Declared under Presidential Proclamation 115-A, the designation is intended to raise public awareness on responsible road use, promote safe driving and reduce the number of traffic accidents.
But just like the country’s observance of March as Fire Prevention Month, what happens each May is that the National Land Transportation Road Safety Month declaration seems to be observed more in breach than in observance. So instead of decreasing, fatal road accidents tend to increase during this four-week period.
One reason for this is that there doesn’t seem to be any active educational campaign on road safety. Apart from the training that one ceremonially undergoes to get a driver’s license, there appears to be no follow-up activities for drivers to continuously learn about safe driving.
Government agencies that serve the land transportation sector should at least mount a photo exhibit showing published photos of road accidents in schools or in the malls to serve as a warning, no matter how horrific they may be. Exposing them to something cringey can be an effective way of educating our youth on the importance of road safety.
Why the youth? Because statistics have shown that they are significantly more vulnerable in crash accidents. While the majority of registered motorcycle drivers are between the ages of 30 and 49, young riders aged 16-25 who make up roughly 10-12 percent of registered drivers consistently record the highest number of motorcycle accident fatalities in the country, accounting for up to 13.9 percent of land transport deaths yearly.
Studies also note that young adults are usually more prone to having sensation-seeking habits that gravitate them toward the thrill of riding. Rider behavior shows that impulsiveness and socialization heavily attract young drivers to the freedom of riding motorcycles. And because inexperience and overconfidence are common among youthful riders, they are more likely to figure in accidents than older ones.
One need not look far to see many young motorcycle drivers who practice unsafe riding habits, especially outside city limits. Where traffic enforcers are absent, these riders as well as their passengers do not wear any protective helmets at all.
Many of these riders are just young boys, sometimes not even in their teens yet, acting like they are kings of the road. Even in Cebu City’s mountain barangays where roads on ravines and unstable slopes aren’t exactly driver-friendly, young children can be seen speeding around on motorcycles dangerously. Most likely, they may not even have driver’s licenses or vehicle registrations yet.
All told, let us therefore support the call of Raquel Arce for motorcycle drivers to practice road safety. Let us also call on our government offices in the land transportation sector to conduct relevant activities in observance of the National Land Transportation Road Safety Month to truly raise awareness on these matters, especially among our youth.
