EDITORIAL - A very high price

What started out as a happy occasion quickly turned tragic last Thursday after a Nursing student died and 10 of her classmates were injured after the SUV she was driving flipped over when she tried to evade another vehicle along the  Transcentral Highway in Barangay Gaas, Balamban town.

One of the students later told a news network that they had been drinking before the incident because they had been celebrating.

And indeed, their judgment appears to have already been impaired before the accident. Video before the incident shows them leaving a restaurant and piling into the vehicle, with one observer saying some were sitting on others just to make sure everyone got on board.

Another video taken inside the vehicle itself shows how fast the driver was going just moments before the accident happened.

While we are sad that one student lost her life, we can also say that we are glad the accident wasn’t worse. Because when you consider how fast they were going, where the accident happened, how much damage the SUV sustained, and how many people were crammed into that SUV it could have been much much worse.

We are also sad to say that this was preventable. Had they been driving carefully in what was considered such a perilous stretch of highway this accident may not have happened.

Had they not been under the influence of alcohol this accident may also not have happened. While as of this writing it wasn’t confirmed yet if the driver herself had been drinking too, it’s not a stretch to imagine that the dynamic in the car might have been more different had more of them been sober. They were Nursing students after all and are familiar with injuries that can result from a car crash.

As with all tragedies, the best thing we can do is look at it as a teaching experience. But one that came at a very high price.