Next victim

I knew things were bad, I just didn’t know how bad. Last Thursday’s news brought it home to me. On that day alone, 36 road accidents took place in Metro Manila. Some of them producing tragic results.

The law of averages has caught up with us with the fury of an avenging angel, or wrath of a pent-up storm. One accident was pretty harrowing. A motorcycle with two riders on board swerved to the left, away from the lane reserved for motorcycles, and was hit by a bus. The bus driver would later say he hit the brakes after being startled by the thing suddenly materializing in front of him, but too late. The motorcycle slid under the front of the bus. The networks carried a footage of the unmoving riders being lifted off to an ambulance.

That was one of the 36 accidents last Thursday. The day before, a bus had rammed through the railing in a flyover in Edsa, its front dangling precipitously over the traffic below. The authorities would later say concerned citizens prevented a more lethal result by rushing to shore up the bus before it fell on the MRT tracks. Passengers testified that the bus driver was texting shortly before he drove into the railing.

Thirty-six is an alarming number for traffic accidents in one day in the metropolis alone. It confirms what most of us already feel about the roads today, which is that they give crime a run for its (ill-gotten) money as the one thing to fear when you step out of your home. Which for most people who work is every day. The real tragedy about it is that much of it is preventable. The real tragedy about these accidents is that we allow them to happen.

“Human error” accounts for most of these accidents, authorities say. And most of the humans, such as their behavior on the road entitles them to inclusion in the species, who make them happen are to be found on motorcycles.

Fuel prices being what they are, motorcycles have understandably mushroomed in the metropolis faster than mushrooms themselves have mushroomed in the dark. They figure preponderantly in accidents for reasons that are not hard to fathom. You cannot stop a vehicle on two wheels as easily as you can one on four. Yet for all their inherent vulnerability, motorcycles are some of the most breathlessly reckless things on the road. For reasons known only to them, motorcycle drivers seem to imagine they are exempted from traffic rules. Indeed, for reasons known only to them, they imagine they’re in an action movie. It’s gotten so people have told me that when they pass by an accident and a motorcycle figures in it, they are tempted to shout out, “Motorsiklo ang me kasalanan diyan!”

The motorcycle lanes have helped, but clearly much remains to be done.

Bus drivers are the other major bane of the road. They’re the best argument for gun control, allowing guns to be lugged around especially inside cars being a guarantee for the decimation of their ranks. They do not just cut you off your lane, they shove you off, charging into you from the bus stops with the mindlessness of the bulls in Pamplona charging into a crowd. It’s not every day you remember that they’re carrying a whole load of people while you’re just one or two enjoying air-conditioning and listening to Steely Dan, pagbigyan na lang.

Texting has made them vastly more dangerous. You could be as scrupulous about safe driving as you are about safe sex and you could still share the fate of that railing at Edsa. Or that car that was rammed by a bus driver while texting, which a passenger of the bus recorded on his cell phone. The solution is simple: Ban the use of cell phones while driving. Other countries do so, imposing prison terms along with fines on violators.

Not everything you can attribute to pilot error, however, a great deal you can attribute to human stupidity. A couple of things I’m particularly outraged about stand out there.

One is the bus/jeepney stop at the corner of Commonwealth and Tandang Sora going in the direction of Fairview. I wrote about this already some time back, the stop is located just before and not just past Tandang Sora. When the traffic light turns green, vehicles turning right to Tandang Sora have to fight off the bus and jeepneys going straight ahead, or indeed turning toward their left to get to the middle of the road. That is a recipe for collision, and I’ve heard enough honking and cursing there to wonder how such things have already occurred there.

The other is that spot in SM North where you take a right to get to Pagasa between the annex and the main building. The front of the main building houses the bus terminal, which regularly spits out provincial buses going up north. “Spits out” is the term, the buses coming off its mouth tearing out leftward to get to Edsa, unmindful of your existence. So while you’re turning right, you’ll often enough find a bus coming at you, forcing you to brake violently. I’ve had a few near-misses there myself to wonder how long it will take before a major collision happens. It’s sheer irresponsibility. It’s sheer madness.

Saying we need to educate this country on traffic rules and road safety is putting it mildly. We don’t need signs that say, “Drive carefully,” we need signs that say, “Hoy drayber, magpakatino ka.” Or something akin to the signs that say, “Huwag tumawid dito, nakamamatay.” Maybe “Drive and text? Patay kang bata ka.” We need something to restore sanity back to the streets.

Thirty-six road accidents in Metro Manila in one day must suggest that the only accidental thing about these accidents now is that so far they’ve happened to somebody else and not to you. Otherwise, there’s nothing accidental about them. You know they will happen. Forget that the next victim could be you.

Mind only that it could be your kids.