All bus drivers must be retrained periodically

What a country! 27 years after the EDSA Revolution, nothing much has changed. Anyone with a driver’s license can opt to change it into a professional one,  and soon this driver can drive a huge rig full of heavy containers or drive buses from our numerous bus companies. A few days ago, we all saw the CCTV footage of that overspeeding Don Mariano Bus that skidded off a very wet skyway and plunged into the street below, resulting in the untimely death of 18 passengers, injuring 30 others.

Eighteen people who rode that rolling coffin died a senseless death thanks to a system that allows bus drivers to drive like race car drivers. That CCTV footage showed how the bus planed on a very wet surface and moved from side to side until the driver lost control and the bus swerved to the right and hit the guard rail and crashed into the ground. As the initial investigations revealed from that overturned bus… its tires were already bald. This explains why the bus planed in that wet skyway.

So naturally the blame for this accident points to that reckless driver. But should we stop there? Actually, we should also blame the Don Mariano Bus Company for not putting a safety standard in place for their buses. Bald tires pose a danger not only to its passengers, but also to other motorists who might be involved in an accident. But perhaps a bigger blame can be slapped against the Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board (LTFRB) whose job is not just to give out franchises to bus operators, but also to check on the preventive maintenance of these buses.

Preventive maintenance? In the family of the Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC) that word is unheard of except perhaps in the airline industry, where airlines have to follow international standards, otherwise no insurance company would entertain them. But for the shipping and land transportation industry, this word doesn’t exist!

Thanks to corruption, where government regulators turn a blind eye when they inspect those buses… that’s if they even get to look at any buses at all!

I know that bus operators usually wine and dine these government regulators and they can get away with anything after those dinners! This is the current state of our transportation industry, where the safety of passengers is never given any priority by the corrupt and the damned.

It’s the job of government regulators to ensure the safety of passengers by periodic check ups of their franchise holders, whether it is in shipping or in land transportation. Allow me to give my story when I was a young lad in the early ’70s when my brother and I took a Greyhound Bus bound for New York City from Washington D.C. Since it was raining, we suddenly had to make a non-scheduled stop in Philadelphia.

As I was seated behind the bus driver, I asked him what was wrong with the bus as the bus stopped inside the terminal. The bus driver told me that we are changing buses because something was wrong with the bus. As I was going down… I asked the driver what was wrong with the bus? He told me that the number three speed of the windshield wiper wasn’t functioning. Hmmm, I thought, there were still two operating speeds, yet this driver changed our bus to one that was in full working order.

This story is a great example of the professionalism of Greyhound Bus drivers, whose main objective was to bring their passengers to their destination safely. Alas, safety wasn’t on the mind of driver Romeo Calatcat of the Don Mariano Bus Co. on that fateful day his bus dropped out of the skyway. On the very same day, no less than the LTFRB Chairman Winston Ginez slapped a suspension order against the Don Mariano Bus Co.

Call it a coincidence, but a couple of hours later on the very same day, a Ceres Bus belonging to the Vallacar Transit Corp. met an accident in the town of Badian, Cebu where 2 passengers died and 7 passengers were hospitalized. Investigators showed that the driver was under the influence of liquor and hit an electric post. LTFRB Regional Director 7 Ahmed Quizon had 10 Ceres buses suspended due to this accident. What the LTFRB ought to do is come up with a new and periodic training and re-training of bus drivers, similar to what the CAAP does for airline pilots to ensure passenger safety!

I also say that Skyway toll operators should not just revisit their design of the guard rails, but come up with a more creative solution to prevent rickety vehicles or rolling coffins from using the Skyway. It is easy enough to spot a bald tire by putting a dedicated CCTV camera just to look into tires. Prevention should be the key word, but more importantly is the elimination of corruption within our government regulators. Perhaps buses should display a checklist for passengers to see when was the last time their buses were inspected by the LTFRB? Certainly that can help a lot.

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