BONG WENCESLAO:
When Clark Airbase was U.S. territory, Filipino drivers on a visit were observed to strictly obey its traffic rules. Ditto for Filipino adults who go to visit or live in mainland USA. They drive like Americans do, strictly in accordance with the country’s traffic rules.
What explains this cultural miracle? The answer is enforcement. Filipinos, just like other peoples of the globe, obey traffic rules when they see that these are strictly enforced and there are to-say-the-least upsetting consequences to their violation.
Thus, I do not see the Land Transportation Franchising Regulatory Board’s (LTFRB) proposed Driver’s Academy doing anything to untangle the nightmarish traffic snarl in our roads. Like why have top-of-the-class-in-knowledge valedictorians been found in scientific surveys to be not a particularly successful lot? It is because knowledge is not as much a key to success as the disciplined application of it towards the attainment of life-goals.
A Driver’s Academy will be nothing more than a waste of taxpayer’s money.
First, graduates will disregard the rules they learn from this academy the moment they see that nobody is enforcing traffic rules and they are forced to improvise to get through the traffic mess stupid and selfish drivers create. Like how would diplomas from a Driver’s Academy untangle the mess at the closed Tabunok flyover when nobody is enforcing, for instance, the very simple system of alternate merge ( puli-puli ba, dili mag-ilog og sud) when going from two or three lanes to one?
Second, what knowledge can the academy impart that drivers cannot learn if regulations are enforced that require applicants to pass both a written and an actual driving test? Or, why don’t traffic experts instead spend a day briefing high school graduating classes on traffic rules?
Third, considering the culture of corruption in LTFRB and LTO (Land Transportation Office) I am betting my last peso that many will get diplomas from the Academy without even attending classes just as many drivers get licenses without passing the written and actual driving tests and just as traffic violators get their licenses back by paying not legal but under-the-table fines.
If ever, an academy could much better be established for traffic managers, traffic policemen and traffic enforcers. But that would only help if, and this is a humongous “if”, the said Academy can impart the self-respect needed by graduates to perform their duties with integrity.
No road widening, no flyovers, no underpasses and certainly no academy will ease traffic for as long as the absence of capable and honest enforcers give stupid and selfish drivers a field day violating traffic rules. Enforcement is the name of the game.