Manila learns to tame its motorists

By Cecilia Quiambao

MANILA (JP): Absalom Piedad, who drove a subcompact, did not like it when somebody hurled verbal abuse just because he managed to nose ahead of a bigger sedan in heavy traffic. So the off-duty senior Manila police official took out his pistol and taught the impertinent motorist a lesson he would never forget.

A mean and homicidal breed of motorist is evolving on the asphalt jungles of the Philippines where drivers, squeezed by monstrous traffic gridlock, are taking it out on other drivers.

Amid annual automotive sales growth of nearly 30 percent, so- called "road rage" cases, in which drivers come to blows or purposely ram other vehicles in a fight for space, are on the rise.

Adding a deadly dimension are pistol-packing motorists, who use their firepower to settle scores over a dented fender or who has right-of-way.

"Filipinos are beginning to kill or maim each other not over property or love, but over breaches or perceived breaches of road courtesy," the Manila Standard newspaper said in an editorial earlier this month.

"In many cases, road rage happens not because of a slight, but because of a driver's selfishness and bull-headed assertion of his 'rights' on the road."

The story of the accused murderer, Senior Superintendent Piedad, 51, jailed without bail and facing life imprisonment for his moment of madness in a suburban Manila street on Sept. 17, is a case in point.

"We consider traffic as a stressor," said Jay Yacat, a University of the Philippines (UP) psychology professor who is conducting a study on the violent behavior of Filipino motorists. "It is irritating. What traffic does is amplify stress, and after that, you get stressed out. Some would, in this case look for a means of release and violence is just one form of release."

"Given a person who is frustrated with his job or who has experienced recent failure, then that person gets stuck in traffic while in a rush, which, in itself is another frustration, all these can lead to extreme forms of violent behavior," agreed fellow UP psychologist Joseph Puyat.

Almost anyone without a criminal record can own a gun in the Philippines, where police records show civilians have obtained nearly 467,000 firearms permits. Police officials say the ownership of unlicensed guns is also rampant. The number could easily be up to a million.

Severe traffic gridlocks are a fairly recent phenomenon in the Philippines, whose economy, sapped by a power crisis, was at a virtual standstill as late as 1991.

But since then, as the economy improved, vehicle sales have been rising robustly every year, forcing the government to scramble to build additional infrastructure. Local assemblers sold 128,102 vehicles in 1995, industry figures show.

Automotive sales in the nine months to September rose 26.32 percent from the previous year's 65,421 units, and the Philippine Automotive Association, a group of vehicle dealers, has forecast a 44 percent overall sales increase this year.

Government figures show at least 1.5 million vehicles now fight for road space in Manila and its surrounding areas. Its eight million people account for about 12 percent of the national population but its major road network of just over 800 kilometers is not even 5 percent of the national total.

Manila does not have a viable urban mass public transport system, so 80 percent of vehicles are privately owned. What remains for non-car owners is "jeepneys," the smoke-belching converted jeeps mounted on truck frames and engines that form what passes for Manila's public transport.

To illustrate the need for transport, the Philippines is probably the only country in the world where car theft is punishable by death -- when the driver is slain as a result of a carjacking.

Added to the congestion are natural-born traffic offenders, which some say is a national trait.

"The Filipino motorist has a tendency to put one over his fellow driver, even if it's against the law," said Chief Superintendent Norberto Manaog, chief of the Manila police's Traffic Management Command.

Thus, designated bus stops are alien to the culture, and some drivers routinely run through red lights unless a policeman is in full view. Some motorists tailgate speeding ambulances to allow them to get through heavy traffic, while others use illegal police sirens and flashers.

To intimidate other drivers, some vehicles sport the ubiquitous blue and white PRO-GUN stickers, which stand for "Professional, Responsible Owners of Guns."

UP sociologist Nanette Dungo said the quick temper of Filipino motorists comes from Latin influences on the former Spanish Roman Catholic colony.

"We have a culture of patriarchy, which we have inherited from colonization, that makes us very conscious of always being on top of things, of being in charge," Dungo said.

"We consider it an assault on our person if we are not able to do this," she said.

The first and most publicized traffic murder to date is a late-night incident in 1991 involving ethnic Chinese businessman Rolito Go, since jailed for life, who entered the wrong end of a one-way street in suburban Manila and shot dead a fresh engineering graduate, Eldon Maguan, who had the temerity to point out Go's mistake.

In 1995, a police officer was killed and another wounded in a gun duel over a fight for a parking space. This year, as traffic worsened, a Justice Department police agent abandoned his car in the middle of a massive jam, took a hike and took out his frustration by shooting to death a homeless man who was asleep at a traffic police outpost, who he had mistaken for a police officer sleeping on the job.

In another incident, a "jeepney" driver, after being pulled over for running a red light, wrested a policeman's gun from him and shot the officer to death. An unidentified motorist who received a dressing down after beating a red light also apparently returned to the same street intersection a few minutes later and shot dead the hapless policeman.

"There is a striking observation about the Filipino's inability to deal with or express his anger," the Standard editorial said. "In other societies, a shouting match or an exchange of insulting body language would suffice to end a spat among strangers. With Filipinos, a verbal altercation is likely to end with one of the protagonists reaching for a lethal weapon."

This year the government began implementing relatively radical measures to cope with the burgeoning vehicle population. It has banned vehicles on the road in Manila for one day every week based on their number plates. Trucks are barred from most streets during office hours.

President Fidel Ramos, himself the victim of several traffic jams recently, said his government was "taking confident steps towards a future of Metro Manila that we see as more progressive, faster-paced and more hospitable to its citizens."

The government is rushing the construction of flyovers and major new roads to divert traffic away from key bottlenecks like the Epifanio de los Santos Avenue, which links the financial centers of Makati and Ortigas, and has employed thousands of traffic aides to help police direct traffic flow and issue tickets.

It has also authorized the private sector to build toll roads as well as to build and manage a major light rail system designed to carry at least 600,000 commuters a day. Construction of the project, due to be completed in 1999, started two weeks ago.