WHY is road rage seemingly a recurring event in this metropolis of chaos? The answer is in the chaos of our streets.
The Land Transportation Office (LTO) is currently on a campaign to remove e-trikes of various sizes from main streets of the city. I hope they have the manpower and the perspicacity to do a good job. Because so far they have been totally neglectful of the misbehavior of motorcycles, tricycles, bicycles, armored vehicles, along with trucks, buses and cars as they navigate through public roads and highways breaking elementary traffic rules at their whim.
The e-trikes have suddenly appeared with no notice or understanding whether they require licensed drivers, licenses for the vehicles, and where and how they should be allowed on the streets. Furthermore, many who are distinctly minors are driving them around. These vehicles are not toys, but their drivers seem to think they are. They have been seen counter-flowing, cutting across red lights and right-of-way traffic. They behave like the tricycles which have become notorious for taking great risks by getting on national highways and challenging larger vehicles, violating traffic rules and risking getting their passengers killed and harmed along with themselves.
As for the motorcycles, they are the new bane brought on by the utter lack of reliable public transportation. These, too, act like they were in Toyland by weaving in and out of vehicles on the road, cutting them off in mid-flow causing accidents and road rage. The grim statistics here are that about 70 percent of traffic fatalities are drivers and passengers of motorcycles. People begin with no grudges against motorcycles until they experience them acting like they have the overall right of whatever they feel like doing in traffic. Moreover, some of them love to make the extremely annoying noise caused by the absence of mufflers, the better to be noticed and get out of their way but causing noise pollution that can be heard indoors. A friend who recently underwent surgery could hear them inside her condominium in Bonifacio Global City and was the worst for it.
How about armored vehicles, the traditional bullies? They rampage at high speed to intimidate those on their way. The excuse is that they risk being held up as they are carrying cash, though we have hardly heard that happen. That excuse is flimsy. My vehicle was sideswiped by an armored car in Rizal. The driver did not have the courtesy to stop, which made me fly into road rage. I instructed the driver to follow it, blocked it, got down and knocked on their windshield. It was raining, no policeman around, much less an LTO person. They played deaf, but I continued knocking until a guard came down to ask me why? I told him why (their playing dumb enraged me even more). The driver would not come down, I insisted he did and read him the riot act as there was no law enforcer around. He finally apologized, which made me forgive but not forget. Turns out they had delivered the cash and were on their way home empty. No need to bully others on the road either coming or going.
This diatribe by no means excuses cars, trucks and buses from violating elementary traffic rules like beating red lights, taking over space meant for others, speeding and essentially bullying others on the road. They get away with it because there is no law enforcement. The idea of contact-less apprehension is not helping. You need boots on the ground that are tough and incorruptible. Can LTO and/or Philippine National Police (PNP) provide that?
Meanwhile, there is the other problem of drivers who use drugs, fall asleep and are so incompetent they overrun curves, fall into ravines, overtake without caution, which means they should never have gotten a license to drive, much less drive public transport.
So, when will the LTO or the PNP or whoever is in charge of traffic rules and conditions alleviate road rage by putting order in our streets? In other Southeast Asian countries, motorcycles and other two-wheeled vehicles have their own lane or move in an orderly way forward according to traffic rules with cars and buses, each in their own lane. Why do we have so-called bike lanes? You see the sign, but you do not see the designated lane or only bikes using it because there are vehicles that are not bicycles on it.
It all comes down to no reliable public transport, so the next best thing is a clutter of whatever can move no matter how unsafely, illegally and illogically. Here is where the government from the executive department, legislators and civil servants have failed us again. They did not foresee the need for public transportation, put infrastructure that catered to cars and were clueless about population growth. Incompetence, if not worse, from them.
Traveling through the streets of this metropolis and beyond is to experience the violation of the elementary rules of traffic order and courtesy. Discipline is absent and so are the disciplinary officers.