DÉJÀ VU. Late Wednesday evening, I nearly got hit by a speeding quarry truck at the junction of the Circumferential Road and Porac Road. It was a perfect repeat of what happened in August 2009 which I wrote about here.
THE OTHER night, a loaded dump truck coming from Porac ran a red light and, if not for my brakes, smashed into my old dependable Toyota Crown. The near-mishap occurred at the Angeles-Porac Road-Circumferential Road junction near DWGV station in Barangay Cutcut.
There may, indeed, be something wrong in the timing of the traffic lights there as a number of motorists complain. But there is absolutely everything wrong in the way those quarry truck are being driven.
Damn those truck drivers. I have written here once. Damn those truck drivers. I am writing here again. On any night, the stretch of the Angeles City Circumferential Road is one road to perdition.
With no less than five trucks at any time clogging the southbound lane at each of the two quarry checkpoints – the first near the Holy Family Academy and the second near Stedar Montessori – all other vehicles had to patiently wait or risk life and limb by overtaking through blind curves.
Yes, these quarry truck drivers have absolutely no sense of the rampa or the road shoulder they ought to take when transacting whatever business at the quarry checkpoints.
Damn those quarry truck drivers. And may as well damn those quarry checkers too for not telling the drivers to do so.
Twice already, hulking northbound quarry trucks – in utter disregard of traffic laws – took my southbound lane, forcing me to seek the graveled safety of the road shoulder, else I would have long been the late lamented Lacson.
Had I my gun on those two occasions, I would most certainly have been Rolito Go twice over. And with enough to spare.
And most certainly too, it is not only me who harbor these homicidal, if not murderous thoughts, against these truck drivers.
Then there are the passenger jeepney drivers.
Either idiots by birth or abusive by breeding are these self-proclaimed embodiment of machismo, as in basta driver great lover.
How they earned their professional drivers’ licenses bespeak of the equal idiocy if not the rampancy of corruption at the Land Transportation Office.
Driving rules and regulations require vehicles to stop or park well outside the lanes. Jeepneys stop to load or off-load passengers right in the middle of the streets, holding traffic at their leisure.
Try accosting them and you get the standard reply of “Mahirap akong naghahanap-buhay lamang, ikaw de-kotse kang mayaman, kaya pasensiya ka.” As though poverty were an excuse to break traffic laws.
Where there are “No Loading, No Unloading” signs, there they precisely do their pick-up of passengers, right under the noses of traffic aides. Tell them the traffic aides will apprehend them for violations. “Nabayaran na yan,” they retort with a smirk.
At night, jeepneys become accidents wanting, not waiting, to happen. Holding to a perverse belief that they save on their batteries, many jeepney drivers ply their route at night with their headlights off.
I have had too many close calls to count when overtaking in the dark, I get suddenly confronted by a jeepney with no headlights.
Then there are the tricycles and tri-wheelers that traverse the national highways. Aren’t these supposed to be banned there? And on some nights too those tricycle drivers have the spunk of making MacArthur Highway, and even the very narrow and precipitous Megadike Road as drag racing circuits!
The way all those TODAs – that’s for Tricycle Operators and Drivers Associations – go about their trade, they most appropriately are well named – todas. Being the harbingers of death and destruction.
So we rage at these road infractions. So the LTO and the police soundly sleep.
