Waking up at dawn is natural for senior citizens like me. In my utilitarian’s mental and emotional mold, I have to make use of the time I am awake. Watching televisions’ early morning news programs has thus become my habit.
Being informed is being useful. There is a 4 a.m. radio/television news of ABS-CBN that seems to update listeners/viewers with information coming not only from Metro Manila but from the countryside as well.
After a full hour of that show, I begin to switch channels for a wider coverage. GMA-7 gives an added news perspective. Every now and then, I also tune in to Channel 5 where, I worked some of my youthful years in its programming department.
One morning last year, 2018, I busied myself in listing down the news items that were carried by both ABS-CBN and GMA. At the end of one hour, I reviewed my list. What I discovered frightened me.
Violent crimes out of the illegal drug campaign and crimes against property were the regular menu. But the number of vehicular accidents topped the list. The summary of traffic reports in Metro Manila showed volumes far exceeding the other news topics. Not only that.
There were accompanying horrifying statistics. That day alone, there were four persons who died on the road and they were all riding motorcycles.
I tried, in two more mornings, weeks apart, doing that sampling by switching to the TV news sources. My kind of study might not really be scientific but still I was able to gather some data. The results were not different.
My record showed that about four riders of motorcycles died on the road each day resulting from traffic accidents. Four deaths a day. To me, the statistics came out from the sheer volume of motorcycles.
Mandaue City has a better traffic-monitoring system compared to Cebu City. The Mandaue City leadership of Mayor Luigi Quisumbing has to be commended for trying to find ways to improve its traffic system.
Towards this direction, it has put up clear closed circuit TV cameras on its busiest roads. Both ABS-CBN and GMA can attest to this fact because in their regular late afternoon news, they never miss featuring accidents caught by these cameras. On few occasions, I gave these traffic reports my attention and found out that a high percentage of the recorded accidents involved motorcycles.
Whether in the nation’s capital or here in metropolitan Cebu, the more gruesome deaths from traffic accidents involved motorcycle riders. There were video clips of motorcyclists run over by bigger vehicles. One footage (which should not have been shown) had a human body crushed under the tires of a ten-wheeler. It was reported that the motorcycle tried to pass the truck without the truck driver noticing him until he felt a thud.
Several days ago, Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña gathered together motorcycle drivers. Reports said that there were more or less six thousand such riders. In fact, they were habalhabal operators, so called.
I mean that all the motorcyclists in attendance had been using their motorcycles to carry passengers. As confirmed by the distribution of BOPK election materials to those attending the gathering, it was a good political campaign act.
True to the off tangent nature of this column, I did not look at that move as a political gambit that it really was. Rather, I viewed it in a different angle. This kind of public transportation arose because of the failure of the city to provide a better, safer and more efficient road network.
All these 30 years of the Osmeña administration, not a meter of a new road had been opened. Naturally, the resulting traffic is unmanageable. The habalbanal has to take its place because they try to bring people to destinations faster.
What I worry is that with the exponential increase of motorcycles running on our streets, there would be more fatal accidents on hand. I do not want to stain the hands of the mayor with the blood that might come from the victims of motorcycle accidents.