Having gotten a point and click camera for the holidays, I began to snap images of the different ways to circumvent traffic rules and regulations. Having gone shutterbug-crazy over my newfound hobby, I was able to capture an image of a law enforcer driving a law-enforcement vehicle (obviously!) without wearing seatbelts. Sticking to my resolution for 2013, I decided to do further research on the law itself and try to figure out why this attitude of not wearing a seatbelt is prevalent among most of their kind.
Going through Republic Act 8750, or the Seatbelt Use Act of 1999, I found out that I am actually a law-breaker. Everyday I travel to and from work with a passenger who isn’t buckled up. Section 4 of the act specifically mentions, and I quote, “…the driver and front seat passengers of a public or private motor vehicle are required to wear or use their seat belt devices while inside a vehicle of running engine on any road or thoroughfare…†And all the while, we were absolutely sure our front seat passengers were indestructible and would not need to wear a safety harness.
More often than not, checkpoints setup by law enforcement agencies only check for the driver wearing a seatbelt. If the law clearly states that front seat passengers must buckle up, why is this not being strictly implemented? The answer to that lies in a line under Section 11 of the same act which states, and I quote, “the agency primarily responsible in the enforcement and implementation …. shall mobilize available resources to assure the effective implementation of this Act…†And we all are fully aware of the “available†(and not apt, or at par) resources that they possess. If you have a profile in a popular social networking site, I’m sure you were tagged in a photo of one such employee of this agency violating every single traffic law known to exist. And sadly, that’s what is currently “available†for effective implementation.
Which brings me back to the beginning. So why is this attitude prevalent among people who are employed in that sector? The answer lies in Section 2 of the Act which states, and I quote, “It is hereby declared the policy of the State to secure and safeguard its citizenry, particularly the passengers and drivers of private and public motor vehicles…†So I made use of a popular online search engine and tried to find out if government employees are, somehow, exempt from being included in the term ‘citizenry.’ I found out that citizenry is defined as a whole body of citizens (much help that was!). I tried to go further and found no help at all (a citizen is defined as a person who lives in a city or a town). So I abandoned that end and decided to assume that we all know what a citizen is.
Having read that section of the article, I finally realized that, since it clearly states that this act is for drivers and passengers of private and public motor vehicles, that makes the law enforcers and all other government employees exempt from following the said law. So I decided to delete the image of a law enforcer not wearing a seatbelt. After all, they are neither a driver nor a passenger of a private or public motor vehicle.
I already prepared a full public apology (which happens to be a trend nowadays) to all law enforcers and government workers for calling them law-breakers which I was planning to post in today’s article.
Then I stumbled upon Section 3, sub-section d2 and d3…