A WEEK ago, two motorcycles collided in Barangay Casalsagan, Pototan, Iloilo. Three persons were injured. That week, too, in adjacent Negros Occidental, a minor died in a road mishap along the national highway in Sitio Bagtik, Barangay Bulwangan, Hinobaan town. Six others were injured. The vehicular accident involved a tricycle and a motorcycle.
The World Health Organization estimates that about 7,000 Filipinos die each year – and thousands more are injured – due to road mishaps. Out of this number, 79 percent are due to driver’s errors, 11 percent due to defective vehicles, and 10 percent due to bad road conditions and ill-maintained roads.
A lot have already been said about human error in driving and on the poor state of motor vehicles on our streets. This time, allow us to focus on road conditions. There have long been calls for the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) to regulate road infrastructures to provide reliable road instructions to motorists and improve road safety in the Philippines, which is notorious for having one of the worst road conditions in the world.
In fact, a Senate bill was once filed (Bill No. 2886) regulating street and road signs, waiting sheds, speed bumps, sidewalks, pavements, streetlights and other similar infrastructures. It mandates the DPWH to set specific standards and measurements for all road infrastructures across the country. What happened to it? Gathering dust in the Senate?
There is a need to put in place regulations that will promote a uniform and consistent standard for the design and installation of road signs, waiting sheds, streetlights, speed bumps and other road infrastructures to promote road safety.
DPWH should set and define the specifications and measurements of all national, provincial, city, municipal and barangay road and street signs, sidewalks, streetlights and other similar road infrastructures, which shall be in accordance with the universally accepted designs and installations suitable to the country’s standards. DPWH should have no problem with this additional mandate as it has one of the largest allocations in the national budget every year.
Our roads have become safety hazards in themselves. The government should step up in securing the well-being of motorists and the riding public by upgrading and regulating the country’s road infrastructures, which have been neglected for so long.
