EDITORIAL - Killer highway

On the month dedicated to road safety in this country, and as the United Nations launched the first global Decade of Action for Road Safety, a journalist and University of the Philippines professor was killed the other night in a vehicular accident along Commonwealth Avenue in Quezon City. Lourdes Simbulan was in a taxi when it was struck from behind by a Universal Guiding Star Line Pass bus. The bus driver fled.

Simbulan, also known as journalist Chit Estella and a trustee of the investigative reporting group Vera Files, was just the latest casualty in a long string of vehicular accidents in this country. Such accidents happen around the world, but certain countries do better than others in enforcing road safety rules.

The Philippines, unfortunately, is among those with a cavalier attitude toward road safety. Buses and jeepneys keep plunging into ravines on winding mountain roads or figuring in head-on collisions. There have been so many fatal road accidents along Commonwealth Avenue that city authorities imposed a speed limit of 60 kilometers per hour earlier this year and deployed additional traffic police along the avenue. The limit was later amended, allowing private motorists to drive up to 70 kph. But enforcement of the speed limit becomes spotty at night.

That’s still better than no enforcement at all. Enforcement of speed limits is a joke in most places in this country. Traffic cops also have no equipment to scientifically check drivers for drunkenness. Many mass transport operators skimp on maintenance expenses, allowing vehicle brakes, tires and other parts to deteriorate without any replacement. While a drug test is needed to obtain a driver’s license, there’s no way to find out if a driver has taken drugs to stay awake for a long trip, until the vehicle he is driving has plunged off a cliff. Every year, scores of people are killed, wounded or permanently maimed in such accidents.

After the latest deadly accident, there will be a renewed drive to enforce traffic rules especially on Commonwealth Avenue. Unless such efforts are sustained, however, the avenue will continue to warrant its tag as a “killer highway.” And there will be no decline in fatal accidents across the country.