The daily agony

I always get frustrated and even panic when I drive to work each day. Yesterday, a huge public utility vehicle (passenger bus) suddenly swerved and cut in front of me on EDSA.

I was already in the innermost left lane of the highway, yet that bully of a driver tried to squeeze me out and use my lane! I gritted my teeth and thought: This is not right! Aren’t buses only permitted to use the right lane? Not content with barging into the center lane, they even cut into the leftmost lane.

Are they caught? Nada. I don’t see them getting halted by traffic enforcers or policemen and being issued traffic violation tickets – nor are they being penalized for weaving right and left, or coming to a stop – without warning – in the middle of the road. Worst of all, they allow passengers to jump off or jump on at all times – posing a danger to the foolish commuters who think they’re acrobats, and to oncoming vehicles as well. Yet I’m not telling our readers anything new. It’s not only the everyday agony – but the everyday stupidity.

There is a daily battle which drivers have to wage. First, as you leave your neighborhood you may encounter a pedicab or tricycle on a major road or highway – where they’re not supposed to be, but they manage to slip into them somehow. (Never have I spotted a traffic enforcer accosting these guys and penalizing them.) When those tricycle jockeys buzz around, they’re like swarms of little bees obsessed with getting to their honey-hives, simply ignoring the rules of the road. Their excuse is that it’s hanap-buhay (making a living). What about the hanap buhay of millions of others whose progress through traffic they impede? They don’t even know what they’re supposed to stop or at least slow down to look to right and left at every street corner. They just zoom through: and if a vehicle happens to be speeding across the intersection (if this is ever possible in Metro Manila’s traffic), then it’s goodbye to pedicab driver and passengers.

Last year, on a rainy evening, I witnessed one such accident, but in reverse. The ruthless tricycle driver (yes, I’ll call him "ruthless"), even if he knew it was raining hard, insisted on speeding through the streets. By gosh, I saw him crash his tricycle into a car whose hood was, as a result, damaged. I wonder what went on the mind of the aggrieved private car owner, since the tricycle driver, surely, did not have any insurance to pay for the repairs. The helpless car owner instead just got out to check his car for damage, shook his head, exchanged a few words with the erring tricycle driver, then disconsolately drove away.

That pedicab driver was lucky the car owner was so polite, and wasn’t one of those hotheads with a gun (or an off-duty cop, with a gun). If that was the case, he would have no more buhay to make hanap.

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Another nuisance in the streets are the motorbikes and bicycles seen on EDSA and the major thoroughfares. Believe me, I have nothing against the people astride them (they’ve got to work, too), but I just want to know if they have a specific lane to drive on. In all civilized cities or towns abroad, even in some third-world nations, there’s something like a motorbike and bicycle pathway. This would help greatly in avoiding or reducing accidents. I know that certain food-service companies offer their customers super-quick delivery service, with the come-on being that if their messenger doesn’t arrive with your "order" within a time-limit then you don’t have to pay. This service sounds wonderful for hungry people who’re eager for their "lunch" or snack, but imagine this scenario, which takes place everyday. You are driving calmly and peacefully down the road when, all of a sudden, a motorbike appears right in front of you – having zipped in from your left or right – and, by golly, you’ve got to slam on the brakes otherwise the bike-rider will end up in the hospital or the cemetery. If you’re young and your reflexes are swift, you’ll hit the brakes on time. What if you reflexes aren’t that good anymore?

Then, there is the daily "obstacle course."

When you’re at the wheel of your car, you’ve got to be on constant look-out for the pothole, rocks, even boulders, caritons (our Pinoy pushcarts), people literally squatting on the road to beg for alms, and, what else? Pedestrians blithely jaywalking across, never looking. What do they care? They never get caught. But if you bump into them – wow.

I can’t understand why our authorities or "enforcers" allow big boulders, or even hollow blocks, to be left on the road, or diggings suddenly undertaken without proper warning signs or reflector signs. When motorists or PUV drivers swerve to avoid them, they often end up bumping into another vehicle. As for those caritons you have also to swerve to avoid, they often belong to a Metro Manila aide who keeps all the trash and cleaning paraphernalia there. Yet, most of the time, if you look closer, you’ll find that a family, yes, a family is living out of it.

All of us, I’m certain, feel sorry for those who’re forced by poverty to beg (although it’s also said that some of them are operated by syndicates). Before you reach the intersection of Ortigas and EDSA, for instance, there’s always this man who sits by the curbside and holds out his hand to beg. Isn’t there any foundation underwritten by the government, operated by the Department of Social Welfare, or another agency, to get our beggars off the streets? Will we have to wait till more of them get struck by speeding vehicles. (I have a hunch many of them have already met such accidents, but the statistics, unless the victims are dead, don’t get into the media.)

As for jaywalkers, they don’t learn because they never get caught and penalized. (My dad says that one of the few achievements of the early years of Marcos "martial law" was that the dictatorship stopped jaywalking. All jaywalkers were rounded up, and forced to do compulsory labor, like cutting the grass and filling in potholes in military camps – probably trimming the greens in military golf courses – and other government compounds and even parks, when we still had parks before they were converted into squatter settlements. As an offshoot, nobody dared to jaywalk anymore. I can’t say those were "the good old days", but that was one of the very few salutary results.

I have friends who drive to work who propose a drastic solution: They want fence too tall to be clambered over by jaywalkers to be installed in the center of every island on our urban highways. There are those who, in their disgust, even want this fence "electrified"!

Why do I sound so fussy over the jaywalking problem? It’s simple: Who wants to hit a person who’s crossing the street? No matter what the circumstances, it’s always the driver or motorist who’ll be considered at fault. That’s the law!

Just picture yourself driving along EDSA at an average speed (or, as some manage to do at above-average speed). Unexpectedly, a person materialized in front of you. You’ll smash into the jaywalker or jaywalkers (plural), or, in attempting to avoid this mishap, you’ll careen into another vehicle. The combination of jaywalkers and accelerating vehicles can cause a lot of grief all around.

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Not the least of pet peeves on my list is the fact that there are entirely too many vehicles clogging our roads. Not even the most decrepit and broken down vehicles (particularly, those very, very old second-hand passenger buses that grind, with thick smoke tailing them, up and down EDSA) is ever sent to the junkyard or the scrap heap.

I would like to suggest to our officials to implement the "retirement" of private and public vehicles who’ve reached a certain "age". In many advanced countries, most public utility vehicles, including taxicabs (such as they do with taxicabs, I hear, in Singapore) are permitted a life of only five years, more or less. In "poorer" countries, this is stretched to 10 to 15 years. Our country is perhaps the worst: We import junk buses from Japan and South Korea which are already ten years old or more by the time they arrive here! (And this is, I’m told, with the approval of the Department of Trade and Industry, a.k.a. DTI, and the Department of Transportation and Communications, or DOTC.) Will General Mendoza who’s taking over as DOTC Secretary next week, on July 3rd, please note!

In fact, General Mendoza announced in a press release published yesterday that he planned to "modernize" land transportation. How can we be modern if even our public vehicles are about fifteen years old – or older? I suggest that the DOTC, DTI and other agencies establish this strict procedure: Every time a car, for example, needs to be registered, an authorized shop has to check its engines and other essential parts and determines whether it still meets the standards set by the government for registration. (Ay, many will exclaim: this opens the door to more kutong-kutong, extortion, palusot and corruption, but we’ve got to begin remedying what we do somewhere.) I won’t say "sometime", because the time is now!

Incidentally, I got a text message tagged Bantay Usok from Globe 290. It asked everyone to "report smoke belchers by texting USOK (space) PLATE NO. (space), LOCATION (space), VEHICLE TYPE, and send to 2366." I got this message just as I was going down the highway seeing a bus covering itself with its own self-generated smokescreen of black exhaust fumes. Talk about coincidence. I exclaimed: we must have aksyon agad. I immediately tried this text-alert program out, and later discovered that no action would be taken unless there are three reports about the same violation at the same time. How this system will ever get going – if that’s the condition – somewhat mystifies me. But we live in hope. Let’s hope the Land Transportation Office (LTO) which launched this program with Bantay Kalikasan succeeds.

On the other hand, there’s no hope, it seems, to change he mentality of too many of our bus operators. Yesterday noon, incoming DOTC Secretary Larry Mendoza met with the Metro Manila bus operators and provincial bus operators at a luncheon-meeting in "Gloria Maris" restaurant in Greenhills. Would you believe? One of the leaders of the bus operators’ association, a former songbird, had the temerity to stand up and request General Mendoza for a moratorium, or walang huli (no apprehensions or arrests) of smoke-belching buses for the next six months?

General M, if you yield to that: Then, truly, there’s no hope!

Everything happens on EDSA. Yesterday morning there was even a shoot-out in which the policemen got the worst of it. But that’s a tragic story for the front page.

In this section, it’s the everyday agony and tragedy we’re worrying about.