Preventing preventable road tragedies
IF anything can go wrong, it will—again and again. The essence of Murphy’s Law seems all too real in our country where aggressive driving coupled with faulty brakes form the common recipe for vehicular crashes that have become a way of life or, to be more precise, the way of death for many.
Last Tuesday’s tragedy along Mindanao Avenue in Quezon City where a speeding cement mixer truck toppled over and flattened a Honda car – killing 35-year-old Ulysses Ramos and injuring his wife Marife and their three kids aged 4, 8, and 12 – is another crash that could have been prevented with sufficient road safety efforts.
The truck driver, 27-year-old Jayson Muleta, claimed the brakes failed but road safety experts like Engr. Alberto Suansing think otherwise. Interviewed on TV after the crash, the former LTFRB and LTO chief said the common excuse of faulty brakes is usually cited to mask what is often attributed to driving error or deadly behavior on the road.
But if it’s established that the driver is mainly to blame, should he be the only one deserving of condemnation? How about the cement trucking firm or operator whose apparent negligence failed to ferret out and keep off a homicidal maniac behind the wheel and to ensure the truck was roadworthy? Is the LTO lacking in diligence to ensure it licenses only the physically and psychologically fit to drive? Should vehicle inspection be enhanced and strictly complied with to determine continuing road worthiness?
TV viewers tuned in to subsequent news reports on what had befallen the Ramos family must have felt how terrifying it was. Moments before the mishap, it certainly was a happy family – with the kids excited on their way to dine out and get groceries, and drooling over a puppy bought by their father earlier in the day as a surprise for them. To be stuck, all of a sudden, underneath the crushed roof of their car istragic indeed.
It’s even more tragic when it seems no hard lessons have been learned from past mishaps. In 2013, another cement mixer trying to beat a red light at the corner of Aranetaand Del Monte avenues in Quezon City fell onto a passenger jeepney and pinned to death 21-year-old college student Marie Inzon.
As a result of the tragedy, MMDA’s then chairman Francis Tolentino required cement mixer trucks to display warning signs to alert motorists and pedestrians to keep a safe distance from the vehicles. “Cement truck drivers are usually in a hurry to reach the construction sites when they are carrying wet cement, and this raises the risks they pose on other road users,” Tolentino said.
Though requiring warning signs was appropriate, last week’s tragedy showed the move wasn’t enough. Should they use blinkers or even sirens, like emergency vehicles, so people can be alerted more effectively to the danger posed by these cement trucks? Or should a more efficient scheduling of trips be sufficient for these trucks to reach destinations on time without having to hurry up recklessly?
Aside from cement mixers, deadly crashes also involve speeding buses. To cite a few, there was the Don Mariano Transit bus that fell off the Skyway in December, 2013, causing 18 people to perish; the Panda bus that crashed in Tanay, Rizal, last February, killing 14 students on the way to a camping activity; and the Leomarick bus that fell last April into a ravine in Nueva Ecijawhere 30 people died.
It’s alsoin the Philippines where the amazing can happen: In November, 2014, two school service vehicles racing each other collided in Quezon City and injured seven schoolchildren. It was the stuff of every parent’s nightmare, and such would have been unthinkable in other countries where laws uphold child safety and ensure that school bus drivers exercise extraordinary diligence in transporting schoolchildren.
Statistics show an average daily toll of 34 deaths from road crashes around the country. It’s an appalling manifestation ofdeadly road behavior, encouraged by half-hearted traffic rules enforcement or seeming apathy of authorities to promote road safety consistently.
When Suansing was guest in my Teleradyo program SagotKo‘Yan (DZMM 8 to 9 am Sundays), he said the most common causes of road crashes are drivers’ temperament, bad driving habits, lack of road discipline and basic road courtesy, ill-maintained vehicles, with only about 10 percent due to poor road conditions.
He said drivers must always check the following before hitting the road: B.L.O.W.B.A.G.S. — which stands for brakes, lights, oil, water, battery, air(in tires), gasoline, and self (one’s condition to drive).
The prevalent culture that makes a mockery of traffic rules ought toend. Balikbayans are aghast when, while stopped at a red light, a driver behind honks like crazy to ignore the red signal when no other vehicles are crossing and when there’s no enforcer around. And they are shocked when people trying to cross pedestrian lanes are scared off the street, a practice unheard of in countries where vehicles grind to a halt if someone is about to cross a pedestrian lane.
Clearly, traffic education must be institutionalized and intensified. It’s good that the Department of Transportation has finally started, just last week, a program requiring drivers of public utility vehicles to attend lectures on traffic signs, anger management, road rage, and driving courtesy before they can renew licenses.
Periodic inspection of vehicles to determine roadworthiness must also be strictly enforced. To deter reckless road behavior, sanctions against traffic violators ought to be more severe. But beyond stiffer penalties, there should be certainty of punishment.