Wednesday, February 06, 2008

Rolling Disasters Waiting to Happen

There's been a lot to blog about these days, from the sudden and tragic death of Oscar-nominated Australian actor Heath Ledger to the abject humiliation suffered by multiple-term speaker of the House of Representatives Jose de Venecia, to the way a Filipino on American Idol dressed like a chicken became the next William Hung, but the thing about tragedies and downfalls and other forms of personal disaster is that they tend to become footnotes in history considering that once the terrible thing has happened there really isn't much else to talk about.

What I want to talk about is essentially a "sequel" to an earlier post I made about those idiots on scooters that they pay for at the rate of something like five pesos a day. Since making that post I have heard that no less than the Asian Development Bank has conducted a study on the death rate of these motorized primates and has come to the conclusion that it is of epidemic proportions.

These guys still raise my blood pressure every time I'm on the road, and even when I'm walking on the sidewalk as quite a few of them seem to view it as an extension of the road they can drive on. Tricycle drivers aggravate me similarly but somehow I've learned how to live with them. At least with tricycle drivers there's no danger that I might accidentally kill one on the road; they're too big and too slow to make a move sudden enough that might result in my running over them.

The problem with these two-wheeled menaces is that at all times they pose a danger to themselves, pedestrians and motorists. Every single day is a potential new disaster with hundreds of these things (and counting) on the road.

What I think people should know is that we don't have to sit here helpless to do anything about it. We can prepare petitions, breathe down the necks of our legislators and tell them that enough is enough; it's time to get these things off major highways and sidewalks. Let's have them impose prohibitive taxes on the sons of bitches who hawk these things. It's easy enough; all they'd have to do in the face of accusations of draconian legislation is invoke the time-honored principle of POLICE POWER (a legal term; look it up). They would merely have to slap the massive and growing statistics of DEATH in the face of any interest group inclined to protect these chimpanzees' right to roam the streets and say that the need to save lives is more important than anyone's right to act like he owns the road.

I'm serious here; on the one hand it's something of a blessing that all of these pieces of dog turd are getting wiped out as it's a form of natural selection. The smart survive and the stupid end up roadkill. The problem is that the people who run over these blights on humanity are inevitably the ones who end up paying the price; they're the ones that have to go to court and suffer wrongful prosecution and even assuming this doesn't push through, they're the ones who have to live with knowing that they were in an accident that killed someone, regardles of whose fault it is.
Quite frankly, considering the paucity of comments on this blog in the last eight months or so I'm pretty sure nobody really reads it, or that very few people do. Can't say I'm surprised as most of the time I don't really write anything of consequence.

THIS time, though, I exhort my one or two regular readers and the odd person who stumbles onto this blog: please get the word out about these disasters-around-the-corner. Create a link to this post if you're too lazy to expound. Get legislation written! Get these bastards OFF THE MAJOR ROADS AND THE SIDEWALKS!

The sooner these things can get done, the sooner we can stop worrying about having the blood of these fools on our bumpers.

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