Senator JV Ejercito. INQUIRER.net / PATHRICIA ANN ROXAS
“For every road crash statistics, behind every number of injury or death, is a person with a name, with a story.”
This was how Rep. Cesar Sarmiento, chair of the House committee on transportation, underscored his call to raise awareness on road safety in the country.
During a forum led by VERA Files, in partnership with the World Health Organization (WHO), on Tuesday, Sarmiento said that “humanizing road crashes” is the “often-neglected yet powerful way of heightening public awareness” on the serious problem of road crashes which continue to take lives of Filipinos.
Citing a report from the Department of Health (DOH), Senator JV Ejercito, vice chair of Senate public services committee and a road safety advocate, said that in Metro Manila alone, one person is killed by a road crash every 17 hours.
A Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) data, Ejercito said, also showed that the number of deaths due to road accidents has been increasing since 2006.
The “worsening road safety statistics” has become very alarming despite the measures passed, and are set to be passed, in both chambers of Congress.
“This 2017, it is our agenda to pass all interventions that would effectively address the seven key risk factors on road safety. These risk factors are over speeding, drunk driving, drugged driving, driving or riding without fastening the seat belt, riding a motorcycle without a helmet, and the use of gadgets while driving,” Ejercito, who is also the chairman of the Senate Committee on Urban Planning, Housing and Resettlement, said.
“Here, in the Philippines, we already passed six out of seven laws addressing these risk factors and the only measure left out is the Child Restraint Law,” he added.
The road safety forum, which also became a venue for media to identify and delve into under-reported topics related to road safety, is being held at the Edsa Shangri-la, Manila, in Mandaluyong City. /jpv
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