PUBLISHED: Student & Campus Section, Manila Bulletin, 12 November 2008 Issue (Page F-3)
It was a normal Thursday afternoon, driving home after spending the day with my father. We were about five minutes away, but it felt more like ten since the road was congested. I was slowly preparing to turn right on one of the streets when a taxi, coming from the adjacent street, came speeding towards us.
I had the right of way, and I wasn’t in the mood to get hit by another car. So, I hit the brake, figuring that he would see me and stop as well, or at the very least, give him enough space to inch through. But he was moving much too fast to pass through, though, and my dad, a very experienced driver, knew it.
Worse off, he was only looking to his left (he probably didn’t want to get cut by the next car); he neglected to look back in the direction his car was turning. My dad lowered his windshield and shouted to catch the attention of the driver, who was centimeters away from making a dent on our car’s right side. I finally had to honk at him. This caught his attention, and he went on a full stop.
But instead of letting me pass, he quickly started maneuvering to get out of the tight space. But he was careless and hit a tricycle parked on the curb.
During those last few minutes on the wheel after the incident, I couldn’t stop thinking of the taxi driver. I was still a bit angry, but I did feel bad for him. Being a taxi driver isn’t exactly an easy line of work: even if you drive for long hours, usually there’s just barely enough income to bring home at the end of the day. Maybe he was half-asleep on the wheel, tired and sore from long hours of continuous driving. Maybe he was hungry; perhaps he didn’t eat lunch in order to save some money. Or maybe his mind was somewhere else, thinking of how he was going to scrape up enough cash to pay his overdue bills. I pretty much transformed him into a pitiful creature in my head.
Did that excuse his lousy driving? No, it didn’t. Considering how many of the car accidents reported on television involve public utility vehicles and their kaskasero drivers, the last thing we want to do is to vindicate their being ill-mannered on the road. Besides, I too could have been hungry, or tired, of thinking of my overdue bills.
But the fact is, I wasn’t.
I’ve been on a couple of taxi rides alone myself, and I’ve met my share of taxi drivers, some of whom can get quite talkative about their lives. Of course, you never really know whether they’re telling you the truth, and you always have to be wary of the things you reveal or the routes they’re taking. But sometimes, they drawl on for such prolonged periods of time that I can’t help thinking maybe they’re just lonely and in need of someone to talk to, or even talk at. Or maybe I’m just lucky I haven’t been kidnapped yet.
In my own insufficient way, I guess I sympathize with these people. It’s quite condescending, really, to claim that I feel for them when I’ve had no real experience of poverty myself. But what I do understand is that these taxi drivers also contend with high LPG prices, have qualms with higher management, and do overtime, because times are hard and that’s how they get by.
Of course, if I had gotten into that accident, I wouldn’t have thought about it that way. I would’ve been too busy arguing with the taxi driver about whose fault it was, and making him pay for the damage he caused the car. It also would’ve justified the demonized perception I have of PUV drivers in Metro Manila.
It never would have occurred to me to see the human face behind the monstrous taxi driver.
The Of taxi drivers and (almost) car accidents by james.soriano, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Philippines License.
This entry was posted on Friday, November 14th, 2008 at 7:22 am and is filed under iThink. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
“Or maybe I’m just lucky I haven’t been kidnapped yet”
Why would you admit that you think this :/
You know, I’m not really sure how I feel about this. A part of me wants to feel for them, in the sense that yes, they too are humans working to provide themselves, or their families with sustenence and what-have-you.
However, a larger part of me just thinks that there really should be no excuse for reckless, or mindless, driving. I mean, the way I see it, the road is their workplace, and so it is their duty to be respectful at the thoroughfares, and to obey laws et al. In a way, I see this akin to how we expect waiters to be courteous; teachers to be knowledgable in their fields of study; call center agents to be ‘good’ at communicating. It just doesn’t coincide with me when you have a taxi driver who can’t drive well.
Just my 2 cents
Enzo - Hahaha. Does it strike you as so wrong?
Myron - Thanks for them, Myron!
Like I said in the article, that didn’t excuse his lousy driving. But sometimes I think we go too far with portraying them as evil and unfeeling.
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That’s why I commute.
hakhak
elyens
XXXxx
ah, I see your point James. But you (might’ve) forgotten, I tend to see things with a generally evil and unfeeling eye, anyway.
ay, there’s the rub! =))
“Or maybe I’m just lucky I haven’t been kidnapped yet”
that strayed from the topic and might have suggested some sort of generalization that is wrong
you know, something like someone who’s slightly richer than everyone else will most likely be kidnapped by ordinary people, like taxi driers and the like?
maybe i’ve just been around people who have been in such scary situations, and that’s why i tend to think that way. i dont mean to say that ordinary people are likely to do these things, but there are some taxi drivers who have criminal links.
but perhaps the criticism is well-warranted. i certainly did not mean to generalize; instead i meant to point out that it does happen. thanks for the comment, adonis (: