Antatomy of a car crash

The tragic car crash that claimed the life of former welfare secretary Dulce Saguisag and seriously injured her husband, former senator Rene Saguisag, as well as their driver last Thursday forces us to take yet another close look at road accidents and what causes them.

News accounts are all analyzing every factor in their search for whom to blame. As I write this, the dump truck driver is still insisting that he had the right of way while most other witnesses, including a cab driver who was behind the Saguisag’s ill-fated Toyota Hiace, claim that the truck driver ran a red light.

Now who – or what – really is to blame? Some weeks ago in this same column, I shared some of the road accidents (and near-misses) that I have experienced. Accidents are always caused by at least one party – that much is obvious.

But it is in the catastrophic accidents where it pays to try to glean as much information as possible to prevent them from reoccurring. In that previous column of mine, I noted how I had changed my behavior when I approach intersections to a much more cautious one after I ended up t-boning a VW Beetle that had run a stoplight 20 years ago.

My 50-foot-long skid marks showed how hard I braked but I still ended up hitting the driver who ran the red light.

Change the variables a little bit and that driver could have been driving a dump truck and he could have been the one to hit me.

Perhaps the Saguisags’ unfortunate driver had never experienced an accident like mine which caused him to cross the intersection confident that he had the right of way (assuming that their light was green).

Or perhaps it was the early morning hour (the accident happened around 2:00 am) and he just wanted to get right home and sleep.

But – and this is what I learned 20 years ago – having the right of way means shit if some idiot comes barreling through a red light like a bat out of hell. In that instant, who hits whom is just a throw of a dice.

At that unholy hour, people are either in a hurry to get to their destination or just assuming that the lack of cars on the road means that they can cross that intersection without slowing down.

And that’s not yet taking into account that these people are either sleepy, tired – or drunk.

It doesn’t really take a lot of factors to put together a horrific accident. Not surprisingly – and most unfortunately – 578 deaths from 10,628 traffic accidents have already been reported by the local Traffic Management Group (TMG) for the first nine months of this year alone.

That’s 1,180 accidents a month or roughly 39 accidents a day. More to the point, that’s 64 fatalities a month or roughly two per day!

How can we – and the authorities – sleep at night in the knowledge that two people have lost their lives that day. And two more the day after. And the day after…

What a senseless loss of life! Especially when it can all be avoided.

The TMG data also showed 3,336 injuries and 6,736 cases of damage to property from these accidents.

Surprisingly 63 percent of these accidents occurred at daytime. The data does not break down the accidents according to their severity and does not specify if there were fatalities or not. I wouldn’t be surprised if most of the fatal accidents happened at night, though.

The top causes of accidents, based on TMG statistics, are driver error, drunk driving, mechanical defects, over-speeding, use of cell phone while driving, and road defects or roads under repair.

Let’s take those factors one at a time. Driver error can probably be broken down to two things: recklessness and stupidity. A reckless driver will run a stoplight, weave around traffic, drive at high speed in a crowded neighborhood, or do any of a million other things to make his car a lethal weapon.

A stupid (which can include the inexperienced) driver will cross an intersection without looking both ways, change lanes without signaling or looking at his mirrors, or just suddenly slow down or even stop because his or her cell phone rang.

I doubt this is included in the statistics, but stupidity includes not turning on the headlights even when it’s dark (jeepney drivers are notorious here), not turning on the wipers when it’s starting to rain, or even not wiping the windshield when it’s fogging up (I’ve seen taxi drivers commit this).

Drunk driving needs no explanation or further analysis. We just have to inform the MMDA that there are such things as breathalyzers to help deter offenders.

Mechanical defects. Ah, here’s a good one. A lot of the accident reports I read always point to “brake failure.” Every time a bus, truck or jeepney mows down a house or a crowd waiting for a ride, it’s always down to “brake failure.”

I remember understeering straight onto a concrete island in my college days, wrecking my car’s suspension and underbelly. To minimize my guilt, I told the investigating officer that I tried to brake as hard as I could but that the brakes were unable to stop the car in time.

He then scribbled on his notepad, “brake failure.” Hah! I was just going too fast to stop. Over-speeding should have been more like it. But the only places you can get cited for over-speeding nowadays are the Skyway and NLEX.

Have you ever heard of a bus driver being pulled over for over-speeding along EDSA? Heck they’re not even pulled over for blocking half the motorists of Metro Manila when they decide to wait for passengers on the country’s most critical highway. But that’s a different story.

But going back to mechanical defects, when was the last time your car’s brakes failed? We have all been guilty of neglecting our cars and ended up having an overheating engine, a flat tire, or a car that won’t start due to a dead battery, but no brakes? C’mon!

Over-speeding. In our gridlocked metropolis, we actually have to give awards to those who can find the place where they can exceed 100 kph for any length of time.

Still, over-speeding happens and all I can say to those offenders in our potholed (and unpatrolled) autobahns is you better be a damn good driver (in a perfectly functional car) and who happens to be in an emergency.

Make speeding a habit, though, and you ought to be clapped in irons and your fancy sports car consigned to the MMDA depot.

Use of cell phone. Now this is literally the mother of rear-enders. You see this happen more often in slow-moving traffic, when people are overconfident because of the slow speeds. The damage is often minor, even if it causes a major traffic jam over a small scratch.

Last but not least are “road defects” or “road under repair.” And can we add unlighted concrete barriers? I pass Commonwealth Ave. twice a day and I remember when the concrete barriers were newly installed, I’d see smashed lights and bits of bumper on the street in front of them every morning.

I just don’t know whom to blame: the MMDA for installing these concrete barriers without adequate warnings or the drivers who don’t (or can’t) look far enough to see them? If they can’t see a huge concrete block, how can they expect to see a child crossing the street?

Oh what a tangled web we weave! My only hope is that more and more (if not all) drivers get the sense (or the information) to drive safely at all times.

Only then can we reach that Utopian dream of having zero fatalities on our roads.

Have a safe drive!

Here are some of you Backseat Driver reactions from last week…

Most car makers have come out with sub compact cars to beat high gas prices. I wish you could make a comparison based on costs and fuel efficiency. – Robert Young (Fair enough. We’ll take that into consideration.)

Traffic officials should be directing traffic at the intersection and not waiting on the opposite end of the road and preying on motorists. – 09175399399 (What are you, a mind reader? I’m scheduled to tackle that topic for my next turn at the Backseat Driver wheel!)

James, I saw you driving a silver Cayenne along EDSA. You’re not just a good writer, you’re also good looking! – 09154259142 (Yeah, James gives Jestoni a run for his money.)

Speak out, be heard and keep those text messages coming in. To say your piece and become a “Backseat Driver”, text PHILSTAR<space>FB<space>MOTORING<space>YOUR MESSAGE and send to 2840 if you’re a Globe or Touch Mobile subscriber or 334 if you’re a Smart or Talk ’n Text subscriber or 2840 if you’re a Sun Cellular subscriber. Please keep your messages down to a manageable 160 characters. You may send a series of comments using the same parameters.)