Reckless drivers

Reckless drivers | Daily Tribune

Foreign tourists are often astonished by an odd gesture of ours to ensure our safety when crossing our streets.

Not only is the particular gesture odd, but it happens to be highly irregular in the sense that it virtually says that Filipino drivers are basically reckless.

Before that, however, reckless driving was a hot-button issue last week, particularly after a safe-driving advocate’s publicized tiff with the Land Transportation Office (LTO) and the agency’s procedures on ticketing and traffic fines.

This, after the safety advocate’s son was ticketed for reckless driving near a Skyway exit ramp. The tiff generated enough social media offensive and defensive umbrage that it’s basically a muddled mess now.

Anyway, the issue has since come to a head, with the Department of Transportation temporarily barring traffic enforcers from confiscating drivers’ licenses for traffic violations and revising the rules on how long it should take to settle traffic violations.

But, as is usual with our contemptible car-centric Filipino sensibilities, the dispute on reckless driving has left pretty much everyone who isn’t a car nut, particularly urban walkability advocates, cold.

Rightly cold in the face of the daily violations of pedestrians’ rights by self-entitled, selfish drivers who exhibit the unfounded notion that roads are meant only for them and nobody else.

Which brings us to the pedestrian’s flashy outward gesture when dutifully crossing at designated crosswalks — that of raising their open palm to signal oncoming vehicles to stop.

How did that become strangely habitual for pedestrians?

By itself, a pedestrian raising a palm reflects deep anxiety, a deep sense of dread.

There’s dread because, it seems to me, most walkers doubt the typical Filipino car maniac barreling down the road would take the effort to step on the brakes until they’re forced to do so.

Of course, looking out for their own safety is, by all accounts, now second nature to pedestrians in our congested cities of car maniacs.

But having to raise the hand stop sign also graphically tells us that reckless drivers have been getting away for years with violating one fundamental traffic law — to slow down or completely stop at zebra lane crossings.

A violation which, by the way, can’t even be contested in the courts, even in the absence of a stoplight or a traffic officer. A driver failing to stop for, or even intimidate, a pedestrian attempting to cross faces a hefty fine and a revoked license.

But nowadays, nobody seems to be talking about Filipino drivers violating that fundamental traffic rule.

Instead, road safety campaigns are mostly about recording, shaming and penalizing road rage incidents. But that is still about drivers, making it seem that exchanges between drivers and pedestrians aren’t worth anyone’s attention or care.

Officially, too, cars are favored over pedestrians and walkers. So much so that the focus is on atrociously inaccessible, inconvenient pedestrian footbridges rather than street-level crosswalks.

Pedestrian footbridges, no matter how prettified, instead of street-level crosswalks, are yet another car-centric design. They practically say the drivers’ time is significantly more valuable than the pedestrians’.

If drivers are more important, what then is the point of demanding an efficient public transportation system? Or imposing trendy car-less Sundays?

So, isn’t it about time that we encouraged, or demanded, that our transport officials, seeing that lately they’ve been surveilling our streets 24/7, spend more official time and effort in penalizing reckless drivers ignoring and violating the crosswalks?