‘Kaway-kaway sa mga pasaway = payola’?

Very well said, that letter by Carmela Noblejas (“Iconic jeepneys, ‘pasaway’ drivers,” 1/12/17) about the “pernicious habits” of jeepney drivers, more specifically, “counterflowing”—and the most annoying of all that can turn other motorists homicidal: “overtaking other vehicles only to suddenly pull over in front of them.”

That actually happened to us several times, the latest was last Friday the 13th (January). I was driving the family van eastbound along Kamuning Street, Quezon City, which was as usual clogged up at the Edsa crossing toward Kamias Street. We were inching our way forward and, all of a sudden, a jeepney hurtled past us in counterflow and squeezed itself into a gap that somehow developed between our van and the next vehicle ahead of us.

It was a good thing traffic on our lane was moving at a snail’s pace and so stopping to avoid an accident was not much of a problem. We have already gotten used to that “brilliant jeepney maneuver,” but what always pisses us off is their total lack of care and consideration by stopping in front of the vehicle overtaken, to unload passengers.

When I got ahead of that jeepney as it slowed and stopped once again to pick up passengers, I did the same thing its driver did to give him a dose of his own medicine. I pretended I had engine trouble—just about a foot from its bumper. Without any room for him to back up and move past me as another vehicle was so close behind him, the driver got out to lecture me that I was obstructing traffic and making “istorbo (to his) hanapbuhay—etong posporo, sunugin mo na lang yan, tangi-a!”

If it hadn’t been for my family inside the van, God knows to what extreme I might have reacted to that provocation. That is the kind of lunacy many other motorists have to deal with every day.

Let’s face it: The Metro Manila Development Authority has become one palpably useless agency due to its miserable failure to enforce discipline among jeepney drivers (let alone bus drivers). The general public perceives its “kaway-kaway sa mga pasaway” personnel as receiving generous payola from jeepney and bus operators in exchange for their playing dumb. We propose that its budget be reduced to zilch since it is “income-generating” by itself anyway.

JAN VINCENT L. MARTINEZ, [email protected]