EDITORIAL - Death on the road

This sounds like a broken record, but the government needs reminding over and over again: road travel must be made safer. The reminder is needed when at least 19 people are killed and scores of others injured in road accidents in just two days.

Last Saturday morning, two mini buses raced to pick up passengers in Barangay Lucanin in Mariveles, Bataan. The driver of a Five Brothers mini bus lost control of the vehicle and slammed into a Peñafrancia bus, which plowed into a crowded waiting shed before falling into a ravine. Six people at the waiting shed were killed, together with passengers of the Peñafrancia bus and the driver of the Five Brothers bus.

The next day, the driver of a dump truck transporting rocks lost control of the steering wheel and hit a tricycle on Litex Road in Quezon City. Both vehicles smashed into a shanty. Five people were killed and at least six others seriously injured.

Accidents do happen, but there are ways of reducing the risks. Keeping vehicles properly maintained and roadworthy is one way of promoting road safety. Even a perfunctory look at most trucks and buses in this country, however, will show poor vehicle maintenance, which often leads to weak brakes, defective steering wheels, and other faulty parts that make drivers lose control of the vehicles especially when traveling at high speed. Some transport operators refuse to retire virtual rolling coffins but do not want to invest in the aging vehicles’ proper maintenance.

Then there are the drivers themselves. When they’re not disregarding traffic signs and stoplights, they are speeding or overtaking like drunks. And perhaps they are drunk — or high on shabu. There have been reports that drivers on long-haul trips take shabu to stay awake. They may be wide awake, but being high also aggravates their speeding, and makes them careless when negotiating dangerous turns especially on mountain roads.

These problems are not impossible to remedy. Trucking and bus operators must be compelled to improve their vehicles’ roadworthiness. The government must clamp down on the indiscriminate issuance of drivers’ licenses and increase penalties for careless driving. The nation can’t keep reacting to deadly road accidents with a fatalistic shrug.