PNP eyes getting speed guns for traffic enforcers

Two persons, one of them a seven-year-old child, were killed and 11 more were hurt when the vehicle they were riding lost its brakes and overturned in Sultan Kudarat on Sept. 28, 2019. (Contributed photo)

MANILA, Philippines — Lt. Gen. Archie Gamboa, officer-in-charge of the Philippine National Police (PNP), made a proposal on Saturday for the purchase of speed guns to make it easier for law enforcers to be certain about the speed of vehicles so that they can catch those overspeeding motorists.

“How can you tell if [a motorist] is going 60 kilometers per hour? So we need a gadget for that,” he said in Filipino in an interview over AM radio station DZMM.

Gamboa pointed out that most road accidents had been caused by drivers going very fast.

“As we have seen in recent tragic incidents, vehicles lose their brakes. If they were going at 30 kilometers per hour, maybe the damaged would not be as big,” he said.

The PNP, which received the highest budget in 2019, would also have enough funds to buy the speed guns, Gamboa said.

We have regulatory fees that we can program [for that],” he said.

The current speed limit on Eda and other major roads in the National Capital Region, which was recently implemented by the Metropolitan Manila Development, is 60 kph.

/atm