3 Inventions I Wish The Metro Manila Roads Would Have

My mom said I should not be driving. Because when I’m on the road, if not asleep, I’m usually angry. I can’t help it! In the gritty roads of Metro Manila filled with feeling-rakstar motorcycle drivers, bus drivers with IQ and EQ levels that won’t reach the price of gas and injustice, who wouldn’t be angry? So what you are about to read is a recollection of my regular road rants as a passenger and the solutions I wish existed (and would usually do a monologue about).

Emotional Tail Lights

This is actually an improvement of my initial road expression idea which was an external speaker, similar to what people use for barangay level motorcades and recoridas. I’m pretty sure at one point in your life, you wished to yell “P******** mo!” at the bus that dangerously cut you as it swerved unto the wrong lane in EDSA, at 12:30 midnight. But I figured that would make so much noise pollution in our already air polluted roads. So maybe the less deafening but equally expressive alternative are tail lights that can visually express emotions like “Leche naman bigla ka na lang lumipat ng lane?!”, “Tingin mo makakasingit ka kung i-overtake mo ako?” And of course, let us not spare some of the traffic enforcers with hearts as black as tambutso smog. Using our tail lights, we can flash them “Wala kang puso. Corrupt!”. The tail lights are simple and quite easy to understand, only requiring a nano-short attention span (unlike some billboards with 3 sentences as headline!)

Motorcycle Sensors

I’ll probably blame it on the sudden drop of motorcycle prices and the very workable payment schemes, as well as the notion of the macho man riding the motorcycle, wind blowing on his face, battling the difficult challenges of life. (Excuse me but…) ULUL. I’ve met some guys who own motorcycles and big bikes and they would always tell me driving one of those roaring little machines seem to require more skill and responsibility than actually driving a car. You should be extra careful and protect yourself (with a helmet) and your probable (hopefully just one and not a child) passenger. But again, here in the very charming Metro Manila, the motorcycle drivers act like they are Manny Pacquiao of the road – physically small but fast, and with a terrible amounts of confidence (and more often than not arrogance). These motorcycles drive fast with unbelievably low levels of road courtesy. They swerve, they cut, they emerge from directions you can’t even predict. That’s why our cars need motorcycle sensors to alert us and we can actively manage motorcycles that are about to commit acts of road foolery.

The Justice Amendment

As a child, (yes I was in grade six) I would always ask my mom this: If we hit a pedestrian but he’s not crossing on the pedestrian lane, are we going to be punished? Why can’t we simply hit all the people who block the road by not using the pedestrian lane? My parents may have simply concluded that their Promil-fed child is officially a sociopath. After all these years, my thoughts did not change. In fact, I have more thoughts to fortify it. What if we stress that when people are hit and there is a foot bridge or a pedestrian lane near them, the drivers shouldn’t be responsible for them? I find our traffic laws twisted for always siding with whoever’s physically smaller, regardless whether or not they were essentially wrong. Dear lawmakers and city mayors, maybe when you fix the road (with overpriced budgets), you can also fix the road rules? Maybe its about time you give the virtue of justice a closer look. As much as we demand discipline, courtesy and common sense from the drivers, maybe we should also be equally responsible pedestrians.

I always brag about how Machiavellian I can get. And that I’m not a fan ot the “its not the journey but the destination” thinking. But because of everyday experiences of fighting my way from Malabon to Makati just to get to work on time (or to a movie night), I’m now realizing that maybe there’s merit in taking the old adage literally. The road we travel is not just ours, in fact, there are approximately 2.37 million cars passing EDSA everyday*. So I think we ought to think about the way travel – the way we drive or commute. Because If simple rules can’t keep us in order and even occasional road kills seem like not enough reason for us to be responsible, then where the hell are we all going?

*Based on Traffic Dito Trivia