There are a couple of reasons this entry is here. One, I’d like to share with you a little of what researchers advocating driverless cars have been doing to avoid traffic accidents, and, two, I hate those tricycles driven by underaged-lisenceless, non-tax-paying morons making driving on our roads a death race.
Let me deal with the latter first.
Just an hour ago, driving home from a busy day in the office, I was cut by a tricycle from the right and decided to stay just one meter in front of me before overtaking and cutting the next fellow ahead of me in the same way that he did to me a few seconds earlier. In the process, he made traffic signs with his foot, which, of course, was barely seen under normal circumstances, and never mind if his passengers, about six of them in one tricycle, were swaying left and right according to the gyrations of the motorcycle. On top of that, the tricycle driver apparently added too much toti (the gasoline additive for two stroke motor engines which make the motor cycles expel too much smoke from the exhaust pipe) making visibility almost zero. It is as if the tricycle driver intentionally violated traffic rules and the anti-air pollution act.
Just an hour ago, driving home from a busy day in the office, I was cut by a tricycle from the right and decided to stay just one meter in front of me before overtaking and cutting the next fellow ahead of me in the same way that he did to me a few seconds earlier. In the process, he made traffic signs with his foot, which, of course, was barely seen under normal circumstances, and never mind if his passengers, about six of them in one tricycle, were swaying left and right according to the gyrations of the motorcycle. On top of that, the tricycle driver apparently added too much toti (the gasoline additive for two stroke motor engines which make the motor cycles expel too much smoke from the exhaust pipe) making visibility almost zero. It is as if the tricycle driver intentionally violated traffic rules and the anti-air pollution act.
One wouldn’t wonder why tricycle drivers are involved in senseless traffic accidents, almost always resulting in damage to the other vehicle. Of course, the tricycle driver would always claim he can’t afford to pay the damage since he was only trying to make a living for his family, and all that stuff that we hear all the time.
Did you know that tricycle drivers also charge exhorbitant rates? For a distance of less than two kilometers in a lower-middle class residential area, they would charge something like at least P15 pax because it’s “out of the way” or it’s simply “special rate.” But, hey, who’re their passengers? They’re the people who’re even poorer than the drivers themselves. It’s worse for people living in remote barangays (they pay higher fares frequently reaching P50 one way for just a couple of kilometers or so of a not-busy street).
One wonders why the LGUs are unable, or may be unwilling, to do anything about this problem. In certain cities and towns, like, for example, Calamba City, there may be 5,000 tricycles roaming the streets wasting gasoline at any given time (frequently they don't have passengers because they select their passengers, prioritizing those willing to pay much higher fares to their respective barangays). And did you know that the tricycles always stay within the center of town, avoiding passengers going back to their barangays outside the center of the city? In Los Banos, the tricycles only like to go around the streets near the gates of UPLB. Go to places, just a kilometer away, still within walking distance from UPLB Gates, and you're charged more because the place you're going to is "out of the way." Out of the way relative to what?!
Have you observed this interesting tricycle driver behavior?
Have you observed this interesting tricycle driver behavior?
It’s common practice for tricycle drivers to simply make a U-Turn right in the middle of the road even if there is no U-Turn sign. This particular driver did so as if there were no other vehicles on the road, least of all one behind him. Very inconsiderate. But, of course, tricycle drivers behave as if they own the road (but I doubt if they pay taxes, including road users' tax). When do they do it? Any time they feel like doing so. This driver just ahead of me suddenly made a U-turn without even making a sign. Good thing there was no on-coming traffic, else he could just be part of the stats now.
Here's an interesting news for operators of motor vehicles.
I don’t have stats for the Philippines just right now, but let me share with you what Professor Sebastian Thrun, a robotics researcher at Stanford University, told his TED.com audience recently about driverless cars. He made the driverless car for Google, by the way.
I don’t have stats for the Philippines just right now, but let me share with you what Professor Sebastian Thrun, a robotics researcher at Stanford University, told his TED.com audience recently about driverless cars. He made the driverless car for Google, by the way.
According to Professor Thrun, in the US alone self-driving accidents are the number one cause of death among young people, almost all of which are due to human error. Such fatal accidents could have been prevented. The robotics professor, who has made it his advocacy to completely prevent traffic deaths through self-driving by developing cars that don’t need human drivers (as a teen ager, he lost his best friend to traffic accident), said that we could improve highway capacity by a factor of two or three and reducing drastically the number of deaths on the road by simply staying on our own lanes while driving (snaking through more than one lane is common practice for many drivers but this is highly inefficient use of the road aside from it being dangerous). Too, if we keep to our lane, we could easily eliminate all the traffic jams, Thrun said.
Well, under Philippine conditions, drivers always “must” snake through the traffic and insist on being the first to pass through a single lane traffic area. Filipino drivers, by the way, seem to believe that five cars abreast could squeeze into a single lane so that they could all pass simultaneously and much faster together.
Thrun tells us that on the average US drivers waste 52 minutes per day in traffic, which (given the US population) adds up to four billion hours and a gasoline wastage rate of 2.4 billion gallons per year. Oh, but Filipino drivers will tell you, “that doesn’t happen in the Philippines!” Yeah! True! Indeed, it’s worse here!
Have you been watching TV news? May be stats in the US and the Philippines don’t differ much. Perhaps the point of difference might be that most deaths on urban and city roads in the Philippines might be due to motorcycle and tricycle accidents.
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