A couple of days ago, a neighbor and kumpadre of mine, then in the process of renewing his LTFRB franchise for student-shuttling services, asked me, in a seemingly complaining temperament, the Tagalog translation of "How is my drIving? Call LTFRB..." He said that warning was now required to be in the vernacular. I was caught a bit unguarded and could not immediately reply, even as I thought the LTFRB must surely have the standard transltion it wanted. This morning, as I was having my daily five-kilometer walk in a not-so-busy highway, I saw a passenger jeep already showing the original LTFRB notice at the back, freshly painted in bold letters, as: "May reklamo? Tumawag sa LTFRB." Good translation, I mused.
Truth to tell, I have been wondering ever since it was introduced how effectively this LTFRB warning had helped enhance the drivers' safety awareness and responsibility while on the road. Now, I cannot help but assume it's kind of effective. As a matter of fact, Mr.Abaya, the newly installed DOTC Secretary, appears to have been himself convinced that the vernacular translation of the warning should really end up far more effective, lest he would have not paid renewed attention to an old regulation that nowadays most everybody no longer throws a random. And so, the next time I meet my kumpadre, I intend to tell him to just forget everything about the extra effort and cost of new painting the new requirement would entail, as he had no choice but to abide by. That, even as deep inside me I very well know not a few people have been sneezing or laughing at LTFRB in this connection. But of course government rules, at the very least, do deserve an assumption of regularity and good intentions. So be it!
Meanwhile, I suddenly recall a more or less related episode I had been into not so long ago. One day, I had just alighted into a passenger jeep on my way to the city hall, when I noticed that the driver was clearly over-speeding, to the extent of ignoring the two school-zone signposts we passed by in succession. A middle-aged woman sitting opposite me looked into my eyes, perhaps wanting me to help her tell the driver to be careful. I just kept silent. When the jeep finally reached the town plaza and stopped to load/unload new/old passengers, the woman called a traffic officer nearby and loudly complained about the over-speeding driver. Without asking anyone among us, the other passengers, to confirm the truth behind the woman's complaint -- I reckoned that should be the minimum requirement under the circumstances -- the traffic officer just outright demanded and confiscated the driver's license and silently issued a TVR (traffic violation receipt). The driver could not do anything else but scratch his head in voiceless disgust. I muttered to mysef: "Buti nga!" even as I felt a bit of remorse within me that I had earlier ignored the woman's complaint, which I never realized would me as well-meant and defiant as that.
I have just related two true-to-life episodes on how different government authorities implement traffic rules and regulations quite differently from one another. Not unlike the voice of verbs in the English grammar, the one is passive, the other is active: take your choice. For me, actions are truly always mightier than words.
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