It wasn’t confirmed by forensic examination but there were suspicions that seaman Rustico Bas, the driver of the ill-fated Hyundai sedan with four other persons on board, was drunk.
At least that was what one teacher who is a friend of Rosette Capala suspected when she visited Capala’s wake.
Capala’s sister, Carmel, was invited to a gathering at a resort in Talisay City and she called her up to join Bas and two cousins who had been working to get Capala and her boyfriend Oscar Juinio back together again after their relationship soured in the past few months.
The two reconciled and the group left to eat at a popular barbecue station in Cebu City without Carmel, who went home. What would have been a happy end to a weekend outing turned tragic when Bas lost control of the sedan and crashed into the truck in the opposite lane, where four of them died on the spot and Juinio died at the hospital.
On hearing this report, Cebu City Mayor Michael Rama immediately called on the Land Transportation Office to deploy more people to enforce a 40-kilometer speed limit that he ordered at the South Coastal Road.
He also called on the Cebu City Traffic Operations Management (Citom) to assign more people and install more lighting in the area.
The LTO supposedly will deputize more police to augment their personnel for traffic enforcement and orient them on the use of the Breathalyzers which will help determine if motorists are drunk or if they can still drive for as long as their alcohol level is within acceptable legal limits.
But one has to ask whether all these measures, useful as they may be, can stop motorists from hurting themselves and others especially if they’re moving at high speed and crisscrossing lanes before crashing into a traffic island or worse, into a much bigger vehicle or another vehicle with a family on board headed for home.
We are not even certain if accidents that happened at the SRP are due to drunk driving or under the influence of drugs because other factors may be at play like a malfunctioning brake or if the motorist suffers a sudden seizure.
All told, responsibility for ensuring one’s safety on the road lies on the motorist and the commuter as well as the public utility vehicle (PUV) drivers who should be continually reminded that their large trucks, while valuable in transporting cargoes and produce, pose a threat to smaller vehicles.