I DO not hate the tricycle. In fact, I love the tricycle. Honest. For a time, it had done me good.
When I was young, I did tricycle for school money. Saturdays and Sundays, I’d sneak out of the house in the morning to rent a tricycle to earn some bucks via the boundary system.
After breakfast, I’d join the gang at the marketplace, waiting mostly for mothers used to riding a tricycle for home. They were the tricycle tribe, who regularly ride in our trikes after having done their usual marketing chores for the family’s lunch and dinner fare on the week’s most special day, Sunday.
Weekends were always bonanza days for us, trike drivers, since almost every mother, with the maid in tow, would splurge on prime meat for usually bulalo or pochero as the town’s slaughterhouse gets to be busy only on Sundays.
It was hard. Pedals and all, the tricycle then was un-motorized and mostly foot-powered.
Tricycles then were purely two-seaters, just enough load space to match the power of pedal pushers, especially for skinny kids like me back then.
The earnings were always more than I could hope for, buttressing my school money for the entire week, which, with some spare money, I could even treat some classmates to giniling sandwich and Coke at the canteen.
Then one day, the happy days were over. Good-bye to tricycle.
“Didn’t you know you had weak lungs when you were a toddler?” my mother said to me. “The money you earn will not even be enough to buy you medicines once you get sick.”
I got whipped in the butt, lying on my belly.
In no time, I was back to selling pan de sal and popsicles, old newspapers and empty bottles of gin and vinegar, and caimito and santol fruits in season.
But despite my fond memories of the three-wheel wonder, seemingly lost now was my special attachment to it.
Reason?
Each time that I motor now to Calauag, Quezon, some 230 kilometers away from Manila, I find the tricycle not only a highway nuisance but a risk to life and limb as well.
Sadly, it has taken complete control today of the Maharlika Highway with impunity, beginning in Alaminos, Laguna, where it virtually captures the center of the highway without regard for safety. I do not blow my horn in the Big City but I do whenever I go out to the country.
However, no matter how many times I beep on tricycles on the highway as a signal for them to move over, tricycle drivers take no heed, not moving to the right lane to give way.
It’s exactly the same when you go to Baguio City or up North. Between Urdaneta City and Sison, Pangasinan, in McArthur Highway, tricycles lord it over, not giving way to anyone trying to overtake them.
The funny thing is, road-widening of our two main highways in Luzon has become very pronounced, thanks mainly to pork barrel funds now apparently being spent, finally, for infrastructure upgrades.
But, alas, what’s happening is, instead of our four-wheel and up vehicles having a smooth ride to the country because of improved road conditions, their trips are sickeningly spoiled by tricycles refusing to yield the fast lane and stubbornly not using the widened portion of the highway.
What then is the use of widening the highways if our tricycles don’t make use of that extra space that is practically designed for and very suitable to them?
But my real beef is with mayors, Local Government Units and police forces, who continually refuse to enforce the law against tricycles not actually allowed to use highways. How many times have we seen trips to escape city hustle getting roiled and reduced to chaos by highway bastards a.k.a. tricycle drivers, whose lack of courtesy and utter disregard of road laws continue to put us to shame in the civilized world.
In my tricycle days, there were no lawbreakers because, as far as I can remember, law enforcers had been always on the go.
Why it isn’t so now has been the nagging question for the longest time. As I said, I do not hate the tricycle, only the tricycle driver who, today, disobeys the law and utterly lacks road discipline. And, if I may add, law enforcers not enforcing the law are worse than the lawbreakers themselves. Seeing law enforcers roaming around and not enforcing the law are in essence the chief lawbreakers. If you say otherwise, you can believe that Director General Alan LM Purisima is P-Noy’s No. 1 adviser today. Honest.
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