The recent accident concerning a truck that lost its brakes and slammed into a number of vehicles and finally into a police precinct is a sad reminder that despite stricter laws and requirements for vehicles coming into sale in our country, the rest of the Philippine motoring landscape still has much to catch up with as compared to the rest of the world. Initial reports on the telly said five people were killed, while eyewitness accounts state that as many as 17 were killed, including passengers of a tricycle with 11 children on board, either going to or coming from school. Last I heard, the driver, who fled the scene, is still at large.
Let’s forget for a moment who is at fault, but rather focus on who could have done something to avoid such an incident from happening again. The driver, first and foremost, comes to mind. If the driver was a properly trained and educated truck driver, he would have known that riding the brakes down a steep descent is the best and fastest way to kill the brakes of any vehicle, especially heavy, commercial vehicles. Engine braking, or keeping the transmission at a lower gear and use the engine’s compression to slow the vehicle down is the accepted and correct approach when going downhill with a heavy vehicle. Apparently, according to some eyewitness reports, the companion, or pahinante, of the driver of the truck said that the driver kept the transmission in 3rd gear and was even gassing the truck to go faster as it sped down the hill, and the driver ultimately rode the brakes to slow down the truck, which eventually led to brake failure. And a waste of lives.
Second is the owner/operator of the truck. Many of my past articles and columns have been about maintenance. A well-maintained vehicle is a safe, reliable, enjoyable and, in the case of vehicles used for work, business, income-generating assets and not liabilities. Maintenance and preparation are key to a vehicle’s safety, reliability and longevity. Too often, you see trucks with rebuilt and/or replaced hydraulic lines (such as the brake lines) balding tires and engines with one cylinder not firing at all to save on the cost of overhauling the entire engine. Fluids for both transmission and oil haven’t been changed since the Good Lord knows when, and are loaded up with the cheapest of the cheap fuel barely passable enough to be used for vehicles, suitable only for bunker fuel-fed generators, which burn far dirtier than a typical truck engine. An engine that runs dirty will not last long, it will be inefficient due to excessive carbon build-up, which sucks away power and creates more heat and which is, of course, environmentally unfriendly.
The last person or entity that could have made a difference is the government, more specifically the local Land Transportation Office (LTO) branch that registers these vehicles. If the government had stricter regulations for assessing road-worthiness of these commercial vehicles, there would be far less problems that can be traced to negligence of maintenance on these vehicles, poorly made repairs and questionable replacement parts. Many of these trucks are surplus vehicles imported from Japan and Korea where they and other similar commercial vehicles have been deemed unsafe and not road-worthy anymore. Why do we Filipinos have a mind for openly welcoming scraps and garbage from other countries?
The government should have stricter rules and regulations in assessing and registering commercial trucks and other similar vehicles for use on public roads. It should also have a system for training or at least certifying drivers of these commercial vehicles, and ultimately have a scrapping plan for old, tired, unsafe commercial vehicles. Let’s face it, the vast majority of these trucks are not owned by simple mom-and-pop entrepreneurial ventures. A large number of them are owned by large trucking companies with profits in the millions annually. The UK’s Ministry of Transport holds an annual test of vehicles (popularly known as the MOT) to assess the safety and security of vehicles, checking on the engine, emissions, fueling system, brakes, lights, horns and other safety equipment. It’s a pretty simple test, similar to Japan’s Shaken System (Shaken being shorthand for automobile inspection and registration system in Japanese). We want world-class cars, to fill our world-class roads. But we lack world-class drivers and, ultimately, world-class legislation to protect our motoring landscape, and ultimately us, pedestrians and motorists of the Philippines.
How do we implement this properly? Simple. Any vehicle or driver that must see registration/certification at any LTO office will have an approving officer sign off on the vehicle’s road-worthiness or the driver’s competence. If either is involved in an accident, the approving officer will be held liable and accountable in one way or another. Let’s see how many poorly trained drivers and poorly built and maintained cars will slip through the cracks.