Car owners have it good nowadays. Leaps and bounds in automotive design and technology have taken the safety of car occupants to unimaginable levels. We routinely see car drivers and car occupants walking out of horrible car crashes with minor injuries. Passive and active safety systems in modern cars are doing what they’re supposed to do.
Take away those protective metal, plastic, and rubber sheets, however, and you’re left with just your own body—a fragile mass of flesh, bones, and tissues. Natural evolution hasn’t really kept up with the pace of man-made advancements. Modern cars are safe, but the road you’re on is not. In the Philippines, only about 10 percent of households own a car, van, or jeep. That means a vast majority of road users aren’t inside the protective cocoon of cars. That also means a vast majority of road users are pedestrians, public commuters, and users of two- or three-wheeled transport. The vast majority of road users are the most vulnerable.
I’ve had my own close calls on the road. In 2005, when I tried bike commuting with fellow officemates, the front tire of my bike wedged into a sewer grill that ran along the entire width of the street, jackknifing me and causing me to land headfirst on the concrete. In 2018, I was riding an electric kick scooter near my home when the small tires of the scooter ran over the protruding metal cover of a utility manhole. I was again catapulted onto the street headfirst. Good thing I was wearing a helmet and gloves in both instances, and the vehicles behind me were at a safe distance, giving them enough room to stop.
If I were driving in my car and ran over the same spots, I would have felt almost nothing, or maybe just an annoying thump where my car’s fat tires would have gone over that protruding steel manhole cover.
And this is what’s just so frustrating, when you see (and experience for yourself) that the most vulnerable are the ones at most risk on Metro Manila’s roads.
It certainly highlights what the ongoing UN Global Road Safety Week should truly accomplish on a local level. The annual Global Safety Week (May 15 to 21)—organized by the World Health Organization and its partners—is on its 7th edition, and this year’s focus is on sustainable transport, in particular, the need to shift to walking, cycling, and using public transport. It also reiterates the inextricable link between sustainability and safety, as among the key messages is: To ensure safety, road networks must be designed with the most at risk in mind.
As I see it, the “safety gap” between those who use (and ride in) cars and other road users (pedestrians, public commuters, bike riders) have become so wide and in favor of the former, that the situation has really gone against the government’s—thus the people’s—best interests.
The UN Global Road Safety Week calls for policy makers to #RethinkMobility in order to make walking, cycling, and public transport, safe and convenient so that people can make the modal shift to active, sustainable mobility by the year 2030.
The specific target is that road traffic deaths and injuries would have been reduced by 50 percent by 2030, achieved by addressing the whole of the transport system, taking action to ensure safe roads, vehicles and behaviors, as well as to improve emergency care.
The key messages for the Global Road Safety Week, according to roadsafetyngos. org, are:
• There is a desperate need for governments and their partners to rethink mobility.
• Safety must be at the core of efforts to reimagine how we move in the world.
• To ensure safety, road networks must be designed with the most at risk in mind.
• When safe, walking and cycling can contribute to making people healthy, cities sustainable, and societies equitable.
• Safe, affordable, accessible and sustainable public transport is a solution for many societies’ ills.
Road traffic injuries are a leading cause of death and disability worldwide, with around 1.3 million people killed and as many as 50 million people injured each year. For people aged 5 to 29 years, there is no greater threat to their lives. Globally, 1 of every 4 deaths occur among pedestrians and cyclists.
So, yes, let’s rethink mobility. But can we please do the rethinking with more people who think outside the car cabin?
