Council asks CCTO for accident report

CEBU, Philippines —  The Cebu City Council has requested the Cebu City Transportation Office (CCTO) to submit a report on the number of vehicular accidents that have happened in each of the city’s barangays.

In addition, the council also requested the CCTO for a report on the number of traffic violations committed in each barangay.

Councilor Nestor Archival, Sr. has sponsored a resolution about the submission of the report which the city council has approved.

Archival cited a report of The FREEMAN last September 27 indicating that road accidents in the city have doubled.

CCTO Executive Director Paul Gotiong had said that from an average of 200 per month, the number of vehicular accidents in Cebu City has ballooned to about 400 and even as many as 500 during the early months of this year.

Gotiong said that among the major causes of road accidents in Cebu City are overspeeding, disregard of traffic signs, and drunk driving.

He also said the city government, through its transportation office, has identified eight major concerns affecting mobility in the city that include an increased volume of vehicles, lack of public transport, increasing number of accidents, inaccessible sidewalks, Cebu's flooding problem, parking problem, absence of a traffic command center, and the drivers' lack of respect to traffic signs.

In a separate resolution that Councilor Rey Gealon has sponsored, the council urged the Office of the Mayor to expedite the purchase of speed guns for the CCTO to enforce speed limits owing to the increasing number of accidents due to overspeeding.

Gealon said that overspeeding multiplies the risk of accident and the severity of injury during accident.

“There is an urgent need for the purchase of speed guns for the CCTO in order to detect the speed of the vehicles and see to it that drivers are driving within the speed limit, as provided under the Cebu City Ordinance 2612, otherwise known as ‘An Ordinance Providing for the Speed Limits For All Kinds of All Motor Vehicles Within the Territorial Jurisdiction of the City of Cebu, Providing Penalties for the Violation Thereof, Collection of Road Crash Data, and Appropriating Funds For This Purpose’,” said Gealon. — GAN (FREEMAN)