EDITORIAL - Road safety being taken for granted?

There doesn’t seem to be an end to road accidents happening in different parts of the country.

In Cavite early last Tuesday, three people including a pregnant woman were killed and five others were injured after a minivan hit a Toyota Corolla allegedly driven by someone who was drunk and just graduated from senior high school.

Last June 8 in Zamboanga City two persons were killed while a teenage driver was critically injured in a road crash on the San Ramon Highway.

Earlier last Good Friday, a drunk man driving a car ploughed into people in a procession and killed three people and injured 17 others.

Let’s not forget about the accidents that happened in the NAIA Terminal and the SCTEX that also killed people.

But then again we see people who are practically inviting accidents to happen. Like that woman performing stunts on her motorcycle in a Mandaue City highway. Or those riders doing daring banks at the curves of the Cebu Transcentral Highway. Or that biker who did stunts on his bicycle on a Lapu-Lapu City street.

Seriously, why are some of our road users not taking road safety seriously?

Let’s get one thing straight, the road is a dangerous place. You think it’s always safe? No. There is always a risk of anyone in a vehicle getting killed because of an accident.

And such accidents happen when people fall asleep, insist on getting behind the wheel even when they are drunk, disregard traffic rules, don’t have enough driving skills, or show off the skills they think they have.

It would all be well and good if they only end up hurting themselves. But the problem with the road is that they aren’t the only ones there. The road is a space shared with other people. So when someone gets careless on the road, others can end up injured or, worse, dead.

Are some of our drivers not being taught properly on how to stay safe on the road? Or maybe we should word it another way, are they not being scared enough to appreciate road safety? Because it would seem that some of them just aren’t cautious enough and take road safety for granted.