EDITORIAL - Road safety

A few days ago, several newspapers ran photos of the same man riding a motorcycle with a dog riding tandem behind him. Those photos would make for a great poster campaign related to the upcoming deadline for wearing helmets. Both man and dog rode merrily along sans headgear.

It has been years since the helmet law swung into effect, thus making it quite a surprise that a deadline still looms over the type of helmet to wear. What it looks like is that we are headed toward yet another charade.

As there is no stopping the march of time, this latest deadline will come and go. People will be apprehended across the archipelago with media doing its share of counting the numbers and adding up the penalties.

In a few weeks, though, the news will move on to other things and law enforcers will find another bright idea to espouse. The helmets, pushed no doubt by the lobby for a particular type, will be forgotten as an uncomfortable incumbrance.

If Filipinos are truly meant to wear helmets, they would have needed neither law nor deadline to whip them into compliance. But Filipinos simply abhor impositions and requirements. In fact, Filipinos are predisposed to anything goes.

Indeed there is even a far greater safety concern than helmets that the authorities tend to ignore completely, perhaps because of the absence of any lucrative lobby. This is the new trend among jeepney drivers to turn off their headlights at night.

There has never been any effort whatsoever, be it serious or just for show, to go after these drivers. Turning off the headlights of jeepneys at night is a very dangerous thing to do. But because nothing can be derived from a crackdown in this regard, the matter is best ignored.

At least with the helmet issue there can be a lobby for a particular type. But cracking down on the turning off of jeepney headlights does not result in the sale of anything, so why should anyone bother?

By the way, jeepney drivers turn off their headlights at night in order for prospective passengers to see more clearly the destination signboards tucked on the windshields, the words of which would hardly be readable against the glare of headlights.