WE would like to go back to an item in our past column regarding school buses after talking with various parents who are really concerned about their children.

The majority of those parents are really worried about the kind of vehicles that are being used as school buses these days and they have no other choice since only a few of them ply any given route.

They say that many of those school buses are not air-conditioned and are already dilapidated. With the onset of the school season, thousands of children were reported to have contracted flu, cough and colds.

Yes, that is because of the weather. Those sicknesses could have been prevented if those children were comfortable and well taken care of inside those school buses. Exposing the children to too much heat inside the nonair-conditioned school buses for several hours while being transported to and from the school and then getting off while it’s raining is a sure-fire formula for getting sick.

Many supposed “air-conditioned” school buses are mostly masquerading as such, since many parents are complaining that their air conditioners are not functioning.

“Marami diyan na hangin lang ang lumalabas kaya naman tumatagaktak ang pawis nung bata paglabas. Meron namang ’yung driver lang at ’yung mga nasa unahan ang nakikinabang ng air conditioner samantalang ’yung mga nasa likod na nakasakay ay halos magpaypay na lang dahil sa init,” said one complaining mother.

But where do these parents go in order to complain?

That’s one hell of a question since the Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board and other government agencies that are supposed to monitor this business are nowhere to be found. It seems like these government agencies are non-existent at all and not even aware of the problems or concerns of parents and schoolchildren these days.

Another thing that parents complain about are the rogue drivers being employed by school-bus operators. We have seen too many school buses full of children racing against each other, their drivers unmindful of simple traffic regulations. Are we to wait for another accident to happen involving those school buses before the supposed authorities lift a single finger? 

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WE have been receiving several complaints on this one from parents who are already saddled with too many expenses in the schooling of their children and, to tell you frankly, this writer has also experienced it lately.

We are referring to the selling of school car stickers that are worth more than P200 and up.  The rate varies depending on the school. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the school authorities require that their own personnel attach the sticker to the car of a buyer-parent. But what is the reason for this?

Just like the other parents, we encountered this one in the school of one of my kids during enrollment. We argued that we didn’t want the sticker to be pasted permanently on the van that we were using. We told them that we could just tape it on the inside of the windshield so that we might be able to use it in another vehicle that we might be driving in the future.

“No, it’s not allowed,” according to the head of the security of the school. “Utos lang po sa amin ng school. Sumusunod lang po kami!” he said. When we sought the school officials, we were given the runaround and nobody wanted to explain why a new order was issued regarding those car stickers.

This is the problem of many parents, especially those who have two or more cars. Buying as many car stickers is crazy and selling more than one car sticker to a parent who only has one child in a school smacks of profiteering. Would the school, with so little parking space, allow its car park to be teeming with vehicles?

If the car sticker is pasted on one of our cars and we are unable to drive it on certain days because of the number-coding scheme, how can we fetch our child with our other car if it doesn’t have one? If the car sticker is not pasted permanently, we can simply detach it and transfer it to the other one, right? Is that illegal? 

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WHAT’S this thing we’ve been hearing regarding a popular racing driver who is being given the runaround by a company that signed him up as an endorser two years ago?

The racecar driver inked a two-year contract with the said company, which carries a world-famous brand. It ended last year and the contract was not renewed anymore. Yes, the monetary part of the contract was given, but this racecar driver is still waiting for other half of the contract that was supposed to be paid, with products amounting to P1 million?

Talk has it that the employee in charge of the sponsorship has not turned over the products, since the contract was signed in 2005, even though the driver has fulfilled his contractual obligations and more. We are not sure if the company and its new president know about this. 

The company in the spotlight should come to terms with the said racecar driver. His concerns are all legitimate and well-documented and going out in the open might not do good things to the name of the reputable company.

SIMPLY observing the aggressive campaign and the resulting performance in the market of Hyundai, one would see the obvious: the brand is making waves and disrupting the traditional sales flow of the more established automotive manufacturers in the country like Toyota, Honda, Isuzu and Ford.

THERE are motor shows and there are other motor shows, but when mere participants decide to change their role into a much bigger one, the result can put to shame all the motor shows of the past.  And that is what the influential Chamber of Automotive Manufacturers of the Philippines Inc. or Campi wants—to surpass all the big motor shows that were ever staged in the country.

FOLLOWING 30 years of success in manufacturing tires for on and off road applications, BFGoodrich has released two 4x4 tires that have been developed from the company’s experience in the tough Baja and Dakar rallies.

WHEN Cats Motors formally announced its partnership with DaimlerChrysler in the summer of 2005, it immediately found itself facing up to the challenges of the local car industry.

WE would like to go back to an item in our past column regarding school buses after talking with various parents who are really concerned about their children.

LAUNCHING a second-generation automobile can be quite a feat, especially if the previous model is a tough act to follow. And this was the base expectation during Volvo’s launch of its new S80. The first S80 received quite a “thumbs up” that following it up with the next model seemed a tough job.