Summer is just around the corner, and the Holy Week as well, ushering in family vacations, more cars on the road and everything that goes with them.
Driving can either be a pleasurable or a hellish experience, depending on the circumstances and one’s perspective. In the Philippines no one can argue the experience is unique.
The Philippines was ranked the worst place to drive, according to self-reports of users of the community-driven and GPS-based navigation app Waze in the 2017 edition of the app’s Global Driver Satisfaction Index, which it released last November.
In 2012 CNNGo, the travel news web site of the Cable News Network, ranked Manila as the third worst in its list of the 10 worst cities in the world for driving.
In 2014 Manila was included in the Huffington Post’s Top 10 Absolute Worst Places to Drive in the World.
These and other similar listings may not be scientific, they may be perception-based surveys, but they are also all consistently bad; and commuters and drivers in the country have more than enough anecdotal evidence not to argue against their findings.
Let’s face it, nowhere is the airlines pitch that air travel is safer than road travel truer than in the Philippines, particularly in Metro Manila.
Government data show that the number of deaths due to traffic accidents in the country has been increasing since 2006.
Last year the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) said it recorded an average of 23 vehicular accidents per day on Edsa alone.
The Metro Manila Accident Recording and Analysis System reports an average of 299 road-crash incidents every day in Metro Manila. A few years ago, that number was just around 160.
We were hoping these deadly accidents would be significantly cut down after the MMDA and traffic authorities imposed speed limits and other stricter rules along roads that have become death traps, like in Commonwealth Avenue in Quezon City and Diosdado Macapagal Boulevard in Pasay, and along Edsa. But every day we still read, see or hear about some car, bus, truck or jeep killing or maiming people on our roads.
We talk of accidents as if they are predetermined by fate when, the fact is, they are very preventable. Our roads could be a lot safer if we only try to make it so.
Of course, the government ought to take responsibility to make our roads safer, but it’s not the government’s burden alone.
Most road mishaps, according to statistics, happen because of human error like vehicle neglect, speeding, overloading, reckless driving, drunk driving and other violations of traffic rules.
Much of traffic congestion, which costs us billions of pesos in wasted fuel and lost time, could be blamed not just on poor roads but also on the lack of road discipline and basic road courtesies.
Consider your typical commuting or driving experience in the metropolis. You see jeepneys that weave in and out of traffic to load and unload passengers, not caring about the bottlenecks they are causing.
You’ve got buses that operate the same as these jeepneys. There are hardly any designated bus stops or, if there are, nobody really waits there, and the buses don’t really stop there.
Private car owners can be just as undisciplined, attacking metro roads as if they were in a slalom race. Drivers of government vehicles, including police cars and motorcycles, think traffic rules don’t apply to them.
In Metro Manila the bigger the vehicle, it seems the bigger the bully behind the wheel. Drivers of sport-utility vehicles, trucks and buses seem to think they own the roads, hogging lanes and cutting into lanes without a care in the world.
Pedestrians can be just as reckless too, darting across traffic like cats daring to be roadkill. Often, for both drivers and pedestrians, traffic lights are merely suggestions.
You get the picture, we all get the picture or, more appropriately, we are all part of the picture.
The government can spend billions on new traffic infrastructure, on safety upgrades, road-widening projects, flyovers, pavement constructions, traffic lights and other safety signs; it can hire thousands of traffic enforcers and put closed-circuit television on every corner; but if drivers, commuters and pedestrians are not disciplined enough to follow rules, and if they don’t practice the most basic of road courtesies, deadly accidents would still be commonplace, and traffic would still be problematic.
Every day, our individual behaviors can either lead to peace and safety on our roads, or to traffic congestion and even more tragic consequences.
We don’t need any survey to tell us that. This is not perception. It’s the truth.