A 10-year-old boy got hit by a motorcycle on Feb. 8 in Barangay Linao, Barotac Nuevo, Iloilo. Two days earlier, on Feb. 6, a 28-year-old motorist was injured in a vehicular accident in Barangay MV Hechanova, Leganes, Iloilo. Every now and then we hear of road mishaps, some of them fatal.
Why is road safety a serious matter?
That’s because for every road crash statistics, behind every number of injury or death, is a person with a name, with a story. Globally, road traffic injuries are the ninth leading cause of death, responsible for over 1.25 million deaths each year, according to the United Nations.
In the Philippines, the number of deaths from road crashes has stayed above 8,000 since year 2010, according to the Philippine Statistics Authority.
What should be done to accelerate action to reduce the rising statistics on road accidents, injuries and deaths?
There are several risk factors in road safety – overspeeding, drunk or drugged driving, driving or riding without fastening the seat belt, riding a motorcycle without a helmet, and the use of gadgets while driving. We have laws addressing these but the statistics on road accidents remain high.
Aside from the obvious recklessness of drivers and pedestrians and their low regard for personal safety and those of others, we must also look at our land transportation and road safety regulatory architecture. The truth is that ours is archaic and/or severely broken.
It was way back in 1964 when the Land Transportation and Traffic Code (Republic Act 4136) became law. The great-grandmother of our country’s crime laws, the Revised Penal Code, was enacted in 1930. The Public Service Law (Commonwealth Act No. 146) which governs the issuance of the certificate of public convenience (franchise) is circa 1936. The Civil Code of the Philippines (Republic Act 386) is from 1949.
But the strict enforcement of these laws may not enough. Over the years, patchwork amendments to these laws have been done and now we have a neighborhood of decrepit legal houses in need of either overall or major renovation to address present and future road safety concerns.
Our lawmakers should consider updating and future-proofing our land transportation and road safety laws, as well as the related criminal and civil laws. A fresh Land Transportation and Traffic Code must address a continuum of issues from the time the driver’s license is issued, during the process of manufacturing a land vehicle, and when the roads and bridges are built, to the law enforcement, investigation, prosecution, and adjudication aspects of road collisions and incidents.
Let us make our roads safe spaces.
