A Driver’s Half-a-Dozen Pet Peeves

Please allow me to rant, just this once.

Patience is not one of my virtues. I have long acknowledged this as among my weaknesses. The only times I am able to handle it quite well is when I am writing, teaching, and working on a story.

But as a driver in the crazy and chaotic streets of the city, I lose it because there are just too many challenges to my patience every single day. I lost it so badly one time, I furiously and repeatedly honked the horn of my old Volkswagen until it fell off!

My only comfort is that I know I am not alone. These challenges have been my perennial pet peeves and the first government that is able to fix them or deal with them will win my vote in the next elections. After all, if a government can’t solve simple problems, all the more it won’t be in a position to handle more complex ones.

1. Manila Water, the best road wrecker in town.
Its corporate tagline says, “Securing the future today.” Ironically, its contractors madly drill and barrel through even the rare, perfectly cemented roads supposedly to lay pipes for the future. They leave behind a consistent corporate imprint—roads left in disrepair and low-grade asphalt hurriedly and unevenly laid over what were once smooth paved roads. And by the way, who’s supposed to make sure that roads are restored to their original state after the wrecking crew has left? Fortunately for the road wreckers, nobody complains loud enough. So while government builds roads, private contractors destroy them and get away with it.

2. Jeepney drivers who stop and wait for passengers by “No loading or unloading” signs.
Without a care in the world, they mistake or misread “no loading or unloading” for “jeepney terminal.” Never mind if they block traffic or that a long queue of vehicles has started to loudly honk their horns to get them to move—all in vain. Jeepney drivers are quick to complain about their rights being violated but have absolutely zero sense of community. Do Metro Manila traffic enforcers give a hoot? Hell, no. That’s why the tong system thrives.

3. Buses that can’t keep to their lanes.
Here, road lanes are mere suggestions of space that vehicles could confine themselves to. Swerving is common practice so that when whimsical Metro Manila Development Authority (MMDA) traffic enforcers suddenly halt vehicles that carefully shift from one lane to the next, drivers cry bribery! Buses bully and barrel their way through, and given their bulk and their hulk, they should be easy targets for traffic violation tickets. Yet traffic enforcers choose to look the other way.

4. Worsening EDSA traffic.
When the Aquino administration took over, the traffic managers tried to put on a good opening performance. Colorum buses were targeted and lined up close to the People Power monument, providing drivers who regularly ply the EDSA route a brief respite from traffic stress. MMDA chairman Francis Tolentino even put traffic enforcers on the graveyard shift, but really, nothing has changed. Are the colorum buses back with a vengeance, contributing to the over-two-million vehicle load on EDSA? Rhetorical question.

5. Tricycle lanes exempt from one-way roads.
“One way” means all traffic should head toward one direction. Yet one-way streets are bound to have one lane dedicated to tricycles that are allowed to go in the opposite direction. Why the special treatment and the accommodation, and for how much? No wonder road and traffic signs are never taken seriously by motorists.

6. Smoke-belchers
Old rickety, unkempt, dilapidated buses continue blowing black billows of smoke on windshields that protect motorists from toxic emissions. Last September, the environment department reported that air pollution in the metro is worse compared to last year, with emissions close to 50 percent above normal standard. Yet buses, jeepneys, tricycles—the very culprits that had already been identified—continue with their toxicity. It seems we have to wait for a case of death from smoke-belching before authorities act more decisively. In which case, I would propose that a minimum 30-minute direct exposure to black emissions become part of the penalty for offending drivers. “Back to you!” or “Up your nose!” I’d love to declare.