JUST BEFORE noon Friday, July 15, a speeding dump truck struck 12-year-old John Jovit Juguilon, spilling his blood, brains and guts on that stretch of MacArthur Highway fronting the San Isidro Elementary School in the City of San Fernando.
Alas, the Department of Public Works and Highways and its cohorts, the city government of San Fernando and the Pampanga Chamber of Commerce and Industry have no “killer trees” to blame for the highway murder this time, the santols, narras and acacias in front of the school having long been felled, and that portion of the highway long expanded.
There is the tree-killing triumvirs’ oft-invoked mobility, speedy transport of goods and people resulting from the widening of MacArthur Highway, as one (ir)rationalization for the massacre of the trees along its shoulders.
There too is the fear expressed by the tree-saving advocates that an expanded highway will be an invitation to mayhem – speed maniacs reducing crossing pedestrians to pylons in a slalom race.
John Jovit was crossing the road on his way back to his Grade 5 class when he was struck dead.
Trees are replaceable, so they are cut. Human life is not. So (un)reasoned the DPWH-CSF-PamCham in pushing for the total defoliation of MacArthur Highway, damning the trees for all the accidents that happen there.
Sans trees, young John Jovit is dead. So what say they now?
To be fair, the city government had been instituting measures to make MacArthur Highway safer, such as in its assignment of police officers in areas where accidents just occurred.
Yes, for two days straight after the accident, two policemen were guiding pedestrians crossing the very spot where the lifeless John Jovit was sprawled.
And traffic aides became more ubiquitous at every intersection along the national road.
The city council early this year – if fading memory still served right – passed a resolution regulating the use of motorcycles in the city, to wit: 1) riders limited to two at most per bike; and 2) wearing of helmet – “sa ulo, hindi sa siko,” as one poster read – is compulsary.
Just this month, streamers were strewn all across the city announcing that starting July 11, as per instruction of the Department of the Interior and Local Government, tricycles and pedicabs are banned from going through the length of MacArthur Highway.
Really good measures there and most assuredly effective in securing the safety of motorists and pedestrians. That is if only they are implemented.
Any day, any night, helmetless riders weave in and out of traffic along the highway. Families of three or four, many times with infants bundled up, go their merry way right on the inner – and therefore speed – lane of the highway.
And pedicabs are simply everywhere, flouting any and all traffic laws with impunity. Accidents not only waiting, not only wishing, but avidly wanting to happen there.
All this, within distance of the silenced whistles of traffic enforcers. Political will is patently in short supply in the city.
And then there is the dark, dark, dark Baliti stretch of MacArthur Highway where acacia trees still stand.
At the time of Mayor Rey Aquino, indeed up to the end of the second term of Mayor Oscar Rodriguez, that stretch was well illuminated at night. Since the tree-cutting spree though, all the lights have gone out in Baliti.
Which has led to some conspiracy theorists thinking: It is the willful design of the city government to keep the Baliti stretch in pitch dark to have more accidents there.
The worse the accidents, the better to blame on the trees. Therefore the greater (un)justification for their cutting.
Ill will is clearly in abundance here.
