Anti-Distracted Driving and other dead-letter laws

Will the new Anti-Distracted Driving Act be a dead-letter law like many others on road safety? That depends on sensible enforcement by the Land Transportation Office. Viral on social media are tweets on silly implementing rules. Like, the LTO forbids drivers to glance at traffic navigation apps like Waze or Google Maps on mobile phones, when late-model American and European cars already have such GPS displays built into dashboards. Quick correction of that LTO misinterpretation would boost public support.

The law mindfully would avert road accidents arising from blocks to the driver's line of sight. Thus are bans on using cell phones, reading e-books, or stocking dashboards with needless items. But it also mindlessly encompasses drivers of carabao-drawn carts and “kuliglig” (hand tractors) that should not be on highways to begin with. The 53-year-old Republic Act 4136, which regulates land transport, explicitly forbids unregistered vehicles. Rice paddies and farm pathways, meanwhile, are outside the LTO’s purview. Inclusion of such vehicles in the new law gives the impression that they're now allowed on the road, so long as the charioteers are not talking, texting, or playing games on electronic gadgets. Clarifications by the LTO would help.

There is risk of selective enforcement. How would the LTO deal, for instance, with the Filipino king of the road: the jitney. Its very design is hazardous to driving. The windshield is too narrow, the engine hood has distractive horse emblems and other adornments, there is no dashboard for the many interchangeable destination “karatula” (signboards), and there's even a religious altar with candle bulbs and flower vase where a rearview mirror should be. Not to mention, the very jitney system too is distractive, as the driver accepts fares, hands out change, sorts out peso bills in the moneybox, and counts the day’s earnings while weaving through traffic.

The law would fine violators P5,000 for the first offense, P10,000 for the second, P15,000 and three months’ suspension of driver’s license for the third, and P20,000 and license revocation for the fourth. That should scare the hell out of recklessness. But then, what is there to suspend or revoke from the inveterately talk-and-texting non-licensed bicyclist, whom the law covers too?

The Anti-Distracted Driving Act might follow the way of the Seatbelt Act. That law severely fines drivers who do not buckle up or let passengers do the same. Yet on city roads are flatbed trucks set up with plastic chairs as factory employees’ ferries and for family outings. In rural areas are buses filled with riders even on roofs. Seatbelts for them are oddities.

The Helmet Law is rendered useless by the very policemen tasked to enforce it, as they find helmets a nuisance, not a safety necessity. In plush residential subdivisions, delivery motorcyclists are made to remove helmets at entrance gates, lest they be robbers in disguise.

Spottiest is the implementation of the Anti-Drunk and -Drugged Driving Act. The LTO, policemen, and traffic enforcers do not know how to test drivers for alcohol and “shabu”-intake. They do not have breathalyzers, aside from the 50 units that the LTO procured on the passage of the law two years ago, for use in the 7,641 islands of the archipelago.

Another new law now prohibits minors from riding motorcycles if their legs cannot reach the foot pegs and arms cannot wrap around the driver’s waist. Is that not a redundancy? Mopeds are not designed to carry minors in the first place. R.A. 4136, enacted as far back as June 1964, already set the rules on vehicle dimensions, safety features, and allowable passengers. (The habal-habal, a motorcycle equipped with a wooden plank to seat three persons on each side is definitely disallowed.) The LTO must enforce that law. After all, it is the law that formed the LTO.

That old law also specifies speed and load limits nationwide. It states where public utility vehicles may load and unload passengers. It requires vehicle silence in school, hospital, church, and courthouse zones, plus mufflers and soft horns. It even instructs where and how to park, including on slopes; when to yield the right of way and to what vehicles; the obligations of for-hire vehicle owners and fleet operators; and basic driving and road courtesy rules. The LTO would do well to remind its personnel and then all motorists about the provisions.

That law, by the way, requires the LTO promptly to issue proper vehicle registration plates and drivers' licenses. Yet the agency has no such metal plates and plastic cards. The LTO cannot use as excuse the past administration's corruption and ineptitude for the shortage. As far as the public is concerned, it is one and the same agency. It has the duty in fact to file charges against past officials who created the mess.

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