There is a lot to be said about the Filipino driver but to hear some people brag about the Filipino being the best drivers in the world is way off the mark.
Maybe we are, but not when it comes to driving etiquette and following the rules of driving on the road. On this score, I dare say that almost certainly, we would rank at the bottom of the totem pole.
This, however, has not been always the case. There was a time in the past when most drivers routinely obeyed traffic rules and regulations. Sadly, those days are long gone.
Instead, we now see drivers who drive with complete disregard of traffic rules and regulations and these drivers are not ignorant of traffic rules, mind you.
One good illustration of this was during the presence of United States military bases in the country. When Filipinos drove in Clark and Subic, they were the epitome of disciplined drivers. When they left the bases, however, it was back to the salt mines so to speak.
What caused this deterioration in driving etiquette? There is not one single answer. It is a combination of many factors. Insufficient laws, poor enforcement, poor driver education, and poor engineering road works are but a few reasons.
Let us explore some glaring facts to illustrate the kind of drivers that we are. Traffic and other road data are hard to come by and those that are available are often times no longer current. According to some government sources, there are roughly about 270,000 kilometers of road in the country with a total of 9.25-million registered vehicles of all classes with motor cycles comprising the majority with over five-million registered. This 9.25-million figure does not include some regions and so there are really more vehicles on the road.
The Department of Public Works and Highways listed 1,913 people dying in 2013 as a result of traffic accidents. The World Health Organization however, has a more believable figure of 10,137 fatalities. Let us assume that the WHO figure is correct. If we compare this to the yearly traffic fatalities in the United States which has remained constant at about 34,000 yearly fatalities with about 269.7-million vehicles, we can see that our fatalities are staggering in real terms. If for instance we have 50-million registered vehicles, by extrapolating, our traffic fatalities will soar to about 50,000 which should tell us a lot of the kind of drivers we are. For 2015, of all vehicular traffic accidents, 53 percent involved motorcycles and tricycles.
This is of course, hardly surprising considering that motorcycle drivers think that they are exempted from traffic rules. There are five major causes of traffic accidents and the number one cause is the failure of drivers to yield right of way to other vehicles or pedestrians.
Again, this is not surprising because we do not have right-of-way rules. In other countries like the United States, the vehicles on your right have the right of way. Instead, in Metro Manila when drivers meet in intersections they try to stare at each other if possible and decide on who should go first.
The other way to resolve this situation is one driver proceeding to cross and it will then up to the other driver to decide whether to give way or not. What this tells us is that it is time to amend RA 4136 which is now clearly antiquated. The other causes of vehicular accidents are reckless driving, improper turning, tailgating, and over speeding. This is not to mention the often-quoted true story of drivers simply considering a red light as a suggestion.
But how many drivers have died trying to beat the red light? The answer to this question is unfortunately many.
Metro Manila is the only major city in the world that I know that is fencing and putting barricades on its roads because of the inability of government to get the drivers to obey simple driving rules. Government has simply given up on trying to discipline drivers and pedestrians. Traffic enforcement is only supposed to take care of about five percent to 10 percent of the drivers who do not follow traffic rules, not the almost 90 percent of our drivers who routinely disregard traffic rules.
If this is our thinking, there will never be enough traffic enforcers to guard every intersection of Metro Manila’s road system. I know that every car owner leaves the house promising to be a well-disciplined driver until he or she reaches the first intersection when a driver tries to put one over him or her. One aspect that has never been tried in a sustained way is a plan to change the culture of the Filipino driver to someone whose attitude is to follow traffic rules. This is hard but if done in the long term, it would be a quantum improvement.
* * *
In his second State of the Nation Address, President Duterte for the first time addressed the problem of traffic not only in Metro Manila but in other urban centers as well. He ordered the MMDA and other local government units to clear all roads of traffic hazards and ensure the free flow of traffic. He has never waded into the problem of traffic before because he realized early on the almost impossibility of solving the problem.
It would therefore be interesting to see how our transport and traffic agencies and local government units go about implementing his instructions. Will these government agencies integrate their plans with the local government units for more efficient implementation? We will have to wait and see.