Oh oh, here it comes again!

Now, according to a report in this newspaper on July 31, public transportation providers will soon be required to install seat belts in their vehicles. The regulation is being brought into effect in the middle of an extended economic crisis, during which we should consider ourselves lucky if most of our buses, mikrolet and taxis can continue to operate. When are our authorities going to stop showing such an outrageous level of insensitivity?

Besides, technically speaking, what's the use of having seat belts in mikrolet? How fast can they go, even when our streets are much less packed now due to the crisis? In a mikrolet, seat belts will not serve any purpose at all, except, perhaps, to teach people the discipline of wearing them. Worse, many mikrolet passengers only take very short rides. Before they could buckle up properly, they would already be at their destinations. Clearly, this senseless ruling comes from people who never ride on a mikrolet.

Taxis do travel at higher speeds, particularly as they go on toll roads. But, then again, in many advanced countries taxi drivers are not required to wear seat belts as it would hamper their ability to defend themselves during robberies, which have become our cabbies' daily menu here.

And what's the use of requiring these vehicles to have seat belts if you will not be checking whether the belts comply with certain standards? The seat belts should be made of a strong material, not just any piece of canvass. In the United States it is even recommended that the belts be replaced once a vehicle is involved in a high-impact collision. Moreover, the belt's ends should be fixed securely to the car's frame, not just to the floor or to the seat. Who will be responsible for making sure that these standards are met?

And if the standards are not complied with, nothing will come out of the regulation except additional costs to our already suffering people. Take a look at the regulation of wearing a helmet if you want to entertain yourself with another joke. Take a close look at the helmets that motorcyclists wear. They can just put anything on their head and the police will not stop them as long as it looks a little bit like a helmet. Many of the helmets they wear are so flimsy that they will crack at the slightest impact. Many riders even don't even strap their helmets under their chins. What's the point of wearing a helmet, then? Helmets should meet a minimum standard of strength and certainly they should be properly worn before they can provide any protection for your head.

What we need to do is educate our people about safety. This requirement is, at best, just another very insensitive and useless show of power. It's another quick fix that even doesn't solve any problem. Folks, when are we going to have really intelligent and sensitive people up there?

If the City Land Transportation Agency really wants to serve the interests of the people on the streets, there's one thing it can surely do: Require all car owners to have the levels of their headlights checked and adjusted properly so that the bright beams will not blind drivers from the opposite direction at night. This will make night driving much safer and less exhausting, and I'll certainly thank the authorities for it.

ZATNI ARBI

Jakarta