Reckless imprudence

What an understatement that term is, especially when used to charge bus drivers who get into deadly accidents. Whether one or 18 fatalities, as in the Skyway accident last Monday, reckless imprudence is totally unacceptable.

I had intended to write about the problem of speeding on our expressways for some time now, sparked by a trip to Laguna when I borrowed my father’s driver. I usually drive myself but was particularly exhausted that day, and so thought that having someone else drive would allow me some rest.

Alas, the minute we got on the SLEx the driver just went berserk, quickly reaching a speed of 120 kph (kilometers per hour). I told him to slow down, which he did, but within a few seconds he was accelerating again, breaching the 100-kph mark.

“There’s a speed limit on the expressway,” I told him in Filipino, “and there are police watching and catching those who speed.”

I felt like a typical Filipino parent using an outside authority figure to threaten a child. (You know, “Sige, sige, the policeman will get angry,” as if it’s not enough to say you’re the one who’s upset.) I knew, too, that the SLEx patrols do occasionally go after speeding cars, but for the most part they’re very lenient, perhaps knowing it’s futile to go after the speed maniacs.

What signs?

The driver slowed down somewhat, and was quiet. And then a few minutes later, as he began again to accelerate, he asked, “Is there really a speed limit? I don’t see any signs.”

I was flabbergasted, but persisted: “Just slow down. I’ll show you the speed limit signs.”

So there we were, driving along, and I soon realized, Oh no, they don’t seem to have speed limit signs. Then I spotted one sign, circles with numbers “100,” “80” and “60.”

Triumphantly, I told the driver, “There, there, see that ‘100’?  That’s the speed limit for cars.”

He giggled nervously, then explained that he didn’t know they were speed limit signs. Again I was flabbergasted, wondering how he had ever passed the test for a driver’s license where you’re asked to interpret such signs. But then, how many people actually take the test for a driver’s license in the Philippines?

“But what’s the ‘80’ and ‘60’?” the driver asked, interrupting my thoughts.

I had to think a bit and then remembered seeing, in one of those streaming digital boards on the expressway, that those are lower speed limits for larger vehicles—yes, buses included.

“Ah, ganoon,” the driver said, nodding. I always worry when people answer that way, “Ah, ganoon” being a vague term, loosely translated as “So that’s it” but could mean “Sure, sure, I sort of get it,” to disguise continuing confusion, or skepticism.

So Mr. Driver slowed down, but a new problem soon came up: tailgating.

“Distansya,” I urged the driver. Again this guy, who has been driving for more than 10 years, was perplexed, answering that this is the usual distance we have when driving. And I had to explain that when you’re on the expressway and driving close to 100 kph, you need more distance. What if the car in front of you suddenly stops? What if you need to stop suddenly and your brakes aren’t working?

“Ah, ganoon,” the driver replies, and gives some distance.  A few minutes later, he’s over 100 kph again—and tailgating.

With a raised voice I told him, “There are children in the car,” and then realized that the remark was stupid, suggesting that if there were no kids in the car he could speed and tailgate.

I’ll spare you the details of the rest of the journey. We did arrive safely, obviously, but I took over the wheel on the way back, showing him the proper distance between cars, as well as the proper speed, and occasionally pointing out foolish drivers behind us who were tailgating with high beam on.

The Skyway accident was one that was waiting to happen.  If you have buses and jeeps in rural areas going off into a ravine, even at slow speeds, you can imagine the kind of accidents our expressways invite. The Skyway is even more dangerous because traffic is usually light, bringing out a dark side in the psyche of drivers, male drivers especially, to just ram the gas pedal down to the floor.

These accidents are not peculiar to the Philippines.  We have domino-type smashups in the freeways in western countries, sometimes involving more than 10 cars at a time.  All that’s needed is one fast and furious vehicle to suddenly brake, and the next one being just too close, and you have one car smashing into another in quick succession.

But our risks for such accidents are compounded because reckless imprudence is often combined with plain ignorance.  Traffic signs are seen as suggestions (if they’re understood at all) and the lack of enforcement—or even police and traffic aides urging you to counterflow or to proceed even when a red signal is on—worsens matters.

Then, too, there’s machismo at work. I have never forgotten a lecture by Fr. Percy Bacani about machismo, and how even in driving, he finds himself wanting to overtake cars, or keeping as fast as other cars. Bus drivers are supposed to go only 60 kph, which means that cars, which are allowed to go up to 100 kph, zip past them, almost goading them.

License to kill

Can such accidents be prevented then? Unless we can get electronic radar and camera systems in place, I’m skeptical about enforcement on the expressway itself (and on our roads in general).

That leaves us with educating drivers. The mass media will have to be unrelenting in reminding people about speed limits and explaining what those encircled numbers are on the expressways. The tragedy on the Skyway should be a time to rev up the volume with warnings, pointing out the full horrors of the accident. Move away from the corpses in the accident scene and feature the injured survivors and bereaved families. Allow them to vent their rage in the interviews about what “reckless imprudence” can mean: someone not returning home, ever, to loved ones.

Were drugs involved? Maybe, maybe not. It’s the bus companies’ responsibility to screen drivers, and to keep pounding on messages about proper driving, on and off the expressways.

More than drugs, the bus companies’ insistence on paying drivers by the number of trips they make, will conspire with testosterone and adrenaline and the lack of driver education (including their low functional literacy) to turn a license to drive into a license to kill.

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