By Atty. Antonio P. Pekas
Last Wednesday night was hell for those who had to travel Marcos Highway. One Baguio City Hall employee who drives down to Pugo, La Union everyday left his office at around 6:30. Right at Kisad Road, beside Burnham Park, he encountered the tail of the traffic. He thought it was just clogged in front of the Baguio General Hospital, the mouth of Marcos Highway. How wrong he was.
The traffic was practically at a standstill. It moved inch by inch. He had no choice but to grin and bear it, for hours and hours. After five hours, he was able to get through the accident scene about four kilometers away, at the usual accident site, the steep uphill road from the Badiwan bridge or “tunnel.” He reached home past midnight or after more than six hours when it used to take him one hour to negotiate that 50 km stretch.
What was the matter? A big truck was unable to make it up that steep grade at Tuba, Benguet. Worse, it turned turtle as the road was slippery because of a drizzle at 2:30 pm. Before collapsing on its side, the truck hit a passenger bus but the most unfortunate was its having hit a “tanker” laden with diesel fuel that also fell on its side pouring its contents on the road, making it slippery for any vehicle.
With three big cranes summoned to the scene, it took about four hours (2:30 to 6:30) for the “erring” truck to be set upright and be moved. So many people were on the scene to try to help but many of them almost complicated the situation when they almost got killed in the many failed attempts to set the big truck aright. When it was finally moved out, the problem of the slippery road came to the fore. The diesel fuel had to be washed or powdered with cement or mud or whatever. So, finally, the road was opened to traffic at around 10:30.
All those who helped out to clear the road are unsung heroes.
What went wrong? Nothing unusual. Just the usual fault of truck owners and drivers. Most of the time, trucks are loaded beyond their capacity. They should be underloaded when they have to negotiate that killer road.
Then comes in the fault of government, particularly those agencies in-charge of keeping safety on the highways. Many accidents of the same nature could have been avoided had there been a checkpoint in the lowlands to bar heavy laden trucks (beyond what is safe) from entering Marcos Highway. The problem in this country is, such can become a place of corruption. It could become a gold mine for law enforcers. And the accidents would just continue.
In the US, the highway patrol closely monitors the drivers of big trucks. The heaviness of the load is of particular concern. Also the sleep drivers had been having. If they had been on the road beyond the number of allowable hours as monitored from point to point (where logbooks are filled up and signed by officers and kept on the truck for inspection anytime), he would be an accident waiting to happen, a danger to himself and to others. So it is considered a major violation.
In such clime, the use of shabu (crack or the cheapest cocaine) by drivers so they could be driving even for 36 hours straight could not happen. In this beloved country of ours, it was the norm before PDu30’s war on drugs. So drivers became zombies or addicts who could drive for days and nights without sleep until their bodies gave up with greatly diminished alertness and motor responses causing major accidents. How many lives were lost because of this?
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