RAMIREZ
Several motorcycles and four-wheel vehicles were impounded last Monday morning on the first hour of the first day of the enforcement of Mayor Tomas Osmeña’s executive order against counterflowing vehicles or those who drive outside their designated lanes.
Executive Order (EO) 034 authorized the Cebu City Transportation Office (CCTO) to impound for 30 days the vehicles of drivers found violating any form of reckless driving especially those caught counterflowing or those who drive outside of their specified lanes.
The issue on vehicle counterflow has been a source of harsh argument and even road rage between four-wheel vehicle drivers and motorcycle drivers since the latter usually contend that they have the right to road splitting which resulted in many fatal accidents.
I am agreeable with the mayor’s imposition even if I also have objections on the penalty of impounding the vehicle for 30 days. Accidents resulting from a counterflowing vehicles are already countless and have already claimed many lives, either for the erring motorist or innocent pedestrians.
In a Facebook live video of GMA Cebu reporter Nikko Sereno, two of the motorcycle drivers who were among those apprehended on the early hour of the implementation of EO 034 admitted that they are aware of the start of the implementation of the executive order.
Their admission shows that the city government has not failed in disseminating information regarding the start of the enforcement of the executive order including the threat to impound their vehicle for 30 days and being responsible for the payment of the storage fee.
Motorcycle drivers who oftentimes display arrogance when confronted while recklessly driving their vehicles are as knowledgeable about the law but choose to defy the regulation for reasons that they only know, the most common of which is that they are in a hurry.
If we presume regularity in the acquisition of driver’s license, it can easily be deduced that all those who are issued with a driver’s license know the prohibitions on the operation of a motor vehicle, although we could not deny the fact that there are those who get hold of their license through fixers.
I would not argue that the anti-counterflow campaign is a solution to ease out traffic and lessen vehicular accident, but the only problem that I have foreseen starting from the day of its strict implementation last Monday is consistency.
As what I repeatedly said in this column we don’t lack good laws, we have an abundance of it. However, most of them are allowed to go into the deep slumber by agencies and government agencies that are supposed to implement them.
Not to mention those regulators who use the law to extort money from hapless citizens who became the object of their selective implementation.
In the case of the two motorists interviewed by GMA reporter Nikko Sereno, they may be aware of the law but in their minds, they may be thinking that like other laws, its teeth would only bite up until when the regulators like to implement it.
Aside from hoping for consistency in the implementation of the reckless driving law, I am also anticipating that the public will learn to follow the law because it is for their own sake regardless of the presence of regulators.
I hope that the strict implementation of the anti-counterflow campaign would not easily die out as fast as other traffic regulations that were rapidly forgotten.
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