As this blog approaches its second anniversary, I find myself with new and improved things to throw tantrums about. Sure, the last three or four posts or so may have been devoted to gushing about my new hobby, but for so long as human beings in general and Filipinos in particular continue to misbehave, there will always be a tantrum waiting to be thrown.
Like many Filipinos that drive, I find myself peeved by the legions of assholes that I have to confront on the road day in and day out. When I opt for the public transportation, I cringe at the behavior of drivers of both public and private vehicles on both major or minor roads.
Up until recently, my pet peeve was the tricycle driver, followed at a distant second by other public transportation drivers, cops and other various scumbags. My loathing for the tricycle driver needs no explanation to anyone who's ever spent a day behind the wheel of a car in Metro Manila. They are basically the scum of the earth.
But in the last few months, I've become aware of a new piece of rolling trash cluttering our streets. I'm talking about the scooter driver.
Apparently these scooters, which seem to be some kind of love-child of the "Honda Trendy" of old and an actual motorbike are available at highly affordable prices or plans, as a result of which suddenly every other Filipino seems to be driving one, whether or not they really know how to drive.
And these guys are a thousand times worse than tricycles for a number of reasons. First of all, unlike tricycles, they appear to be everywhere. Tricyles operate only in certain types of areas and on certain types of streets. You will almost never see a tricycle along EDSA, for example. On a regular day you will see several of these motherfucking scooters puttering along EDSA. Second of all, they are a lot faster and narrower than tricycles, which often carry several times the weight the motorcycle to which the cab was attached was meant to carry. These things are actually pretty zippy, and can blow by you before you get to look into your rear view mirror. This is potentially quite dangerous as a lot of these scooter drivers are fond of passing wherever their scooters can fit. What happens when the driver wants to make a right turn? It only becomes their problem when they smack right into him.
Third, they are coming onto the scene quickly and in such large numbers that it's hard to develop a driving strategy to deal with them. After so many years of driving one derives a sense of predictability to the way they operate, and develops a way to deal with it, whether it's simply letting it slide or mastering the art of savagely cutting them off (which I do whenever it's feasible). With scooters, however, as stupid as their drivers are, it's hard to peg down their personalities other than that they seem to have absolute contempt for road rules. Their unpredictability makes them extremely dangerous.
At around five in the morning I was driving along Santolan when I saw a crowd huddled around an old Toyota Corolla. It being very early in the morning, I had no problem passing the parked Corolla and heading on my way, but not before I saw a crumpled scooter just under the Corolla's front fender. The driver of the scooter was almost certainly seriously injured at best, and dead at worst. The sad thing of it is, having seen the way these guys drive, I found myself not feeling the slightest bit of sympathy for whoever the guy was, whatever might have happened to him.
Scooters and their utterly reckless drivers present a real problem to motorists of all kinds, and I honestly believe this needs to be addressed.
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