Authorities and the public need to be reminded of several important points in light of Sunday’s accident where a truck fell into a ravine in Tabuelan town, northern Cebu.
A delivery truck, whatever its function, is never a substitute for safer and more comfortable passenger transport.
Granted, former Tabuelan vice mayor Silvestre Momo was just being kind-hearted in letting the ill-fated truck double as public utility.
Still, the municipal government could have delivered better service to townsfolk by providing them with a bus or jeepney for mobility in the upland villages.
The latest accident that snuffed out the life of 54-year-old Nenita Avenido and injured 30 others, many of them students. Thirteen suffered serious injuries.
Didn’t the Department of Interior and Local Government, with the backing of Raul Aguilos, Central Visayas’ land transport czar, ban the use of dump trucks to bring people in far flung areas?
The DILG ordered the ban after the accident a year ago in Barili town, southwestern Cebu where at least a dozen funeral mourners riding aboard a dump truck died after the municipal truck fell off a cliff.
Sunday’s accident in Tabuelan highlighted anew the risk of road travel in remote mountain villages where public transportation is scarce, and hitchhiking on passing trucks is the norm.
The driver said the truck lost its brakes, and the vehicle ran off the road.
In the absence of traffic enforcers or the sloth of transport authorities, many operators and drivers still view regular safety checks on their vehicles as optional rather than mandatory.
The lack of guard rails along the province’s mountain roads doesn’t minimize the danger of vehicles falling off during mishaps.
Will the day arrive when safety inspections of vehicles by drivers, operators and government authorities become a habit?
Will the Department of Public Works and Highways move fast enough to hem in roads especially on mountain ridges with guard rails?
Or will those concerned simply leave us open to the possibility of losing our loved ones on or off the road, wishing in grief and in vain that the fallen will haunt them?