Habal-habal Part 3 - The issue of safety

A lot of objections on the formal legalization of habal-habal dwell on the issue of safety. I say "formal legalization" because that is what is needed for it to become an officially accepted denomination of public transport. It can hardly be illegal because it continues to exist all over the country for the last three decades. If it's illegal, then how come government authorities today do not apprehend people who operate or use the service?

Go to any LGU anywhere in the country. You will find habal-habal operations, informal or formal, even a few with terminal structures. And you will see police authorities nearby who do not apprehend them. Some of them will even patronize the service. Ask local government authorities if they make overt moves of removing habal-habal operations. They won't! Else, you will have a substantial chunk of your population without transport to their barangays, especially those in the uplands. Yes, they're illegal but not regarded as such.

The main objections carried by authorities and experts always hinge on safety issues. Sure, having two wheels seems more unstable than having four -a small child learning to ride a bike knows that. But from the time bicycles and motorcycles became mainstream, people and society accepted two-wheelers as one of the modes of transport, and their sale and use is 100% legal. You attach a sidecar to one and you have a tricycle, which can be legally registered by the LGU. But without the sidecar, putting up one for hire becomes "illegal."

There is no question as to the existence of the safety issues and concerns with motorcycles. We can enumerate statistics involving motorcycle accidents anywhere and it shows that indeed there is a risk toward the high side. I sometimes question the practice why if a collision involves a car and a motorcycle it's considered a motorcycle accident. Isn't the car to blame too, which qualifies it as a car accident also? But there is no information that shows accidents involving habal-habal are higher than those of private motorcycles.

The fact of the matter is, we have an issue on unfair labeling. Private motorcycles tend to have the same higher frequencies of accidents as habal-habal. And yet we excuse the former, register them with LTO, issue driver's licenses which even include restrictions for motorcycles. For all intents and purposes, society, and government, accepts motorcycles as a mode of transport. But only if these are driven without pay. The moment it's for hire, it supposedly becomes "unsafe?"

And here comes TNVS which train drivers for two weeks on safety and security, ensures that they wear helmets and safety vests, train them on customer, manage them so that they conform to and follow traffic laws, rules and regulations -all the things ordinary habal-habal drivers seldom do. And the government cracks down on TNVS, while allowing habal-habal use to continue? Something is skewed somewhere when government cuts a service it allowed for three decades. (To be continued)