Road kill

Many moons ago when I first visited Switzerland, one of the things that struck me was that motorists always stopped for pedestrians, even if the road was nearly empty, the traffic light was green and there was a wide room for swerving. Also, even in deserted areas, a motorist always stopped for a red light.

It’s the same in several other Western European countries, in many parts of the United States, and in other advanced economies including Australia and New Zealand.

It’s different in Asia, where the cardinal rule for motorists, it seems, is to stop only for a red light, and only if there’s a cop or CCTV monitoring traffic.

And even when there are traffic cops and stoplights, sometimes there are simply too many vehicles and pedestrians for effective traffic management. Just try taking a cab in the congested streets of Beijing, Jakarta, Karachi or New Delhi. And of course Manila.

Journalist and University of the Philippines professor Lourdes “Chit” Estella-Simbulan did last week, coincidentally on Friday the 13th for the superstitious, and paid for it with her life.

Later that night I was at the funeral home where she was first taken, in an impromptu sad reunion with several of the other journalists who, like Chit and I, covered Corazon Aquino’s presidency. That coverage, where we often exchanged some of the bawdiest jokes with Chit, included trailing Cory Aquino in Geneva – a first to Switzerland for most of us – to cover her speech before the International Labor Organization.

Chit, a respected journalist and professor at the UP College of Mass Communication, took a cab before 6 p.m. on Friday for a meeting at the UP Ayala Technohub on Commonwealth Avenue.

I was told that the place is located right across the tip of a concrete traffic island built to hug a U-turn lane. There’s another U-turn slot much farther down the avenue. Chit’s cabbie apparently took the shorter turn, tried to cut across the wide avenue to reach the technohub, and was struck by an oncoming bus on the right side where Chit was seated.

The cabbie survived. Chit didn’t stand a chance, becoming the latest fatality along the 12.4-kilometer avenue where police said road accidents claim more than 150 lives every year.

As we joined Chit’s husband Roland, their relatives and friends in prayer right inside the funeral parlor morgue at past midnight, police were still looking for the bus driver, and checking reports that the bus had been hit by another one before it struck the taxi.

Chit became one of an estimated 1.3 million people killed in road accidents around the world every year. The United Nations, which last week launched the first global Decade of Action for Road Safety, reported that road accidents have become the ninth leading cause of death worldwide.

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Is road safety consciousness a cultural thing? I believe it’s more a question of effective enforcement.

Motorists in Singapore, for example, aren’t as polite as those in Switzerland, but they obey traffic rules, and the typical pedestrian doesn’t dare break jaywalking rules in the city-state. That’s because the world knows laws are enforced in Singapore, you better believe it.

Once when my mother and I were in New York and my aunt was driving us back to her home at night on a deserted road in a residential area, I asked her why she kept stopping at every red light when there were no other vehicles or pedestrians or traffic cops around.

She said there were devices monitoring traffic and, more importantly, people monitoring the devices, and there was always a chance she could be caught and fined.

Even random apprehensions of traffic violators can send the message that traffic rules are enforced.

A bit of Big Brother also helps – if there are people manning the CCTV. This doesn’t seem to be the case on Commonwealth, where the Quezon City government installed CCTVs and imposed a speed limit of 60 kilometers per hour shortly after a judge and his wife were killed on the avenue, again by a speeding bus, on their way to attend dawn Mass last December.

On my way to the Prime Funeral Homes where Chit’s remains were first taken, I noticed how wide Commonwealth Avenue was. Being a driver myself, my natural tendency when I see such a wide thoroughfare is to step on the gas until I see something in my way or a red light. My average speed would be 100 kph and I could go up to 140, so I’m not sure if that 60 kph speed limit is realistic. City officials reportedly realized that 60 kph was too slow and raised the limit to 70 kph, but only for private vehicles.

Sixty kph is certainly a safe (and gas-saving) speed for public utility vehicles, especially because they often have weak brakes due to poor maintenance. PUV drivers also feel they need to keep speeding, because of a quota system imposed by transport operators under which drivers get more pay if they get more passengers.

When the need to step on the gas is there, the next consideration is whether drivers can get away with speeding. There are no physical barriers to break the speed on Commonwealth. Pedestrians are road kill. And six months after the death of the judge and his wife, motorists apparently believe traffic cops are rarely on the job along the avenue. If drivers need to and they can, they will step on the gas.

The Metro Manila Development Authority said 99 traffic enforcers are assigned along Commonwealth. The MMDA is now considering the deployment 24/7 of traffic enforcers on motorbikes equipped with radar, which can record vehicles’ speed and stop speedometers for proof of speeding.

These measures will come too late for Chit and her senseless demise. But it would serve her memory if Commonwealth would lose its tag as a “killer highway” and her death (even if it sounds like a cliché) would not be in vain.