In the 1980’s this 12.5 kilometer stretch of road, cogonal and dimly lit at night was notorious for being the dumping ground of dead bodies, victims of murders or what is known in street lingo as “salvage victims “, or those summarily executed by both lawless elements and even lawmen themselves.
A major road artery of Quezon City ,.it leads to the legislative building(the Marcos vintage Batasan Pambansa) or the House of Representatives , the UP Diliman is also near this area and as well as several subdivisions.
Commonwealth avenue is one of the country’s busiest highways like EDSA but today it is infamously known as the “Killer highway “, a monicker it earned due to the high incidence of deaths resulting from vehicular accidents along its vast road areas.
Since it was modernized in the 1990s, it became the country’s widest highway from a six lane road to the present 18 lanes avenue.
But its reputation as the most unsafe and dangerous highway in the Philippines had made it a butt of morbid reference.
Thus, a joke goes around that if you’re traversing this road on any day, you are on a trip called “Biyaheng Langit “ especially if you’re on board on one of the many buses plying this route. Chances are, you can be a potential victim of a crash and may end up dead. No joke but it’s a fact. And authorities don’t seem to care. Until that fateful May 13.
Our media colleague, Chit Estella Simbulan, a veteran journalist and UP professor was on board a taxi along Commonwealth avenue when one of two speeding passenger buses trying to outrace each other hit and rear ended the taxicab with such impact that she was pinned by the twisted metal wreckage. She was dead on the spot.
It took a journalist’s death that authorities only begun to notice and clamp down on safety issues on this wide-lane highway where accidents involving pedestrians and vehicles alike occur almost everyday and yet officials do not have any ready solutions in sight, and if there are any, most of them merely knee-jerk reactions.
Record shows that in 2010 alone, there were 2,743 accidents along the highway. Of this number, there were 21 fatalities and 608 people injured.
Authorities found out a confluence of disregard of road safety, traffic law violations (such as speeding) and lack of discipline among pedestrians have contributed to this deteriorating conditions in the “Killer highway “.
Bus drivers for instance, drive recklessly in their effort to out maneuver fellow drivers to get more passengers. Thus, speeding is a major factor , investigators found out.
Bus companies pay their drivers a percentage based on the daily gross sales of passenger tickets and not on a regular salary basis.
On the average, bus drivers have a daily quota of P12,000 and based on this figure, he gets a 12 percent commission if he meets this daily quota . His conductor on the other hand gets 10 percent.
Gasoline expenses are also deducted from the gross sales.
Thus, a bus driver can have a take home of pay of some P1,300 per day if reaches this cut off ticket gross sales.
Because of this pay arrangement, a driver is pressured to meet his daily quota.
Which means he has to hurry? Make as many trips in the shortest possible time. Translation : speeding and reckless driving,
putting passengers and pedestrians’ lives and limbs in jeopardy and throwing caution and safety to the wind.
The tragic death of Chit Estella and many others in the “Killer Highway “ won’t be the last if authorities, transport companies and the riding public alike continue to place a low premium on road safety, disregard traffic laws and remain undisciplined.