Oh, Bipedalism... Where Have You Gone?

This is an essay. Stories presented on this post are true stories.

I remember a story that my sister told me about her short stay in Singapore. She said that when she and her companions wanted to cross the road one time, they stood on the sidewalk and waited for their path to be clear of cars (and to look like it will be clear of cars for a long enough time for them to cross). They were surprised when the cars themselves stopped and the drivers signaled to my sister and her companions that they (the cars) will remain at a halt so that the pedestrians can cross. Such is how things work in Singapore...and in many other countries, mind you.

If you're from one of those countries and you're reading this, you're probably wondering why I make such a big deal out of that. It would be because that's not how things work here in the Philippines. If you want to cross the road, you would still have to play Patintero with the speeding cars trying to tag you every step of the way. They do not even try to stop until they're about a few meters away from you, which is already a dangerous case since it would be hard to bring the vehicle to a sudden stop, and as often happens, they fail to do so.

Of this gun-like situation, I've experienced being behind the trigger and being in front of the barrel as well. Before, when I'm inside the family vehicle and my father or my mother is driving, I do feel irritated when I'm thrown forward due to the sudden drop in the vehicle's velocity caused by some pedestrian trying to cross the road. But since I started experiencing what it's like for the pedestrians, my thoughts have taken a sharp 180 degreed turn from being pro-vehicle to being pro-pedestrian. So from this point on, I'd write the rest of this post from the perspective of a pedestrian and not...umm, well...a vehicle. Besides, I don't know how to drive, anyway.

Sometimes I wonder what would happen if I cross the road and then I stay still in the middle. It could happen to people for a number of reasons like: they dropped a coin, or anything, in the middle of the road; or something from above fell in front of them, surprising the pedestrians into a halt. But I wonder what would happen if I did it on purpose. I can imagine a number of probable events, mostly based on what I've already experienced (unintentionally, of course: I've never tried staying in the middle of the road on purpose):

1. The vehicle about to hit me would skid to a stop and barely miss me. The driver gets out of his or her vehicle (or at least gets his or her head out) and yells swears at me for being a moron.
2. The vehicle about to hit me would skid to a stop but still hit me. I stay alive. The driver gets out of his or her vehicle (or at least gets his or her head out) and yells swears at me for being a moron.
3. The vehicle about to hit me would skid to a stop but still hit me. I die (obviously, this one is not from experience). The vehicle vrooms away, with few eyewitnesses (if any at all) getting a glimpse of its plate number. The whole incident appears on the evening news as another case of hit-and-run. The driver, in his or her hideout, curses me for being a moron.

Notice that in the three scenarios, none of them involve apologizing, because the mindset here in the Philippines (or at least Metro Manila) is that the pedestrians should know how to cross the road without disturbing the cars' velocities. I experienced once while I was riding a jeepney, an old couple were crossing the road.

The jeepney driver maintained his velocity, probably expecting that when the old couple sees him coming, they would stop (they were already halfway through the road, mind you) and let the jeepney pass. I hypothesize that that's what the jeepney driver was thinking because that's what most people do (it's part of the mindset of not offending the vehicles' velocities). Anyway, the old couple were obviously too old and bent to make the quick sideways glance necessary to bring them in accordance to the way of life that the jeepney driver had prepared for them. So they didn't stop. The driver noticed and so he skidded into a split-second stop, barely missing the old couple. He quickly set the jeep into motion but at a much slower pace so that he could poke his head and a quarter of his torso out the window and yell at the old couple:

"Ang tatanda niyo na kasi, alanganin pa kayo tumawid!"

("You're already old and you still had the audacity to cross the road at an awkward timing!")

As we passed the old couple, I looked back, and they didn't seem to hear anything. I thought to myself, what if they were deaf? And what if fate had just been one ounce less forgiving? Would that old couple die simply for being deaf? And simply for being weakened by age?

Since I developed a deep resentment for that driver, I'd let out all my sentiments about him here.

First, by the time the old couple came into view, they were already in the middle of the road and the driver didn't get to see when and how they started crossing. So he has absolutely no right to say that they crossed the road at an awkward timing.

Second, if the driver thinks their timing is awkward simply because he almost hit them, then he's making this judgment on the assumption that the old couple had seen him coming before they crossed the road. Judging from the velocity with which the old couple walked, however, it's obvious that they had started crossing the road way before our jeepney came into their view. So he is mistaken in making that assumption, and therefore, mistaken in making that judgment.

Third, it was the old couple, and not the driver, who almost got killed. Why the freaking heck is the driver the one mad?

There is an unwritten law here that when you want to cross the road, you have to wait until the road is clear of cars, and that it would look like it will be clear of cars for a long enough time for you to cross, before you cross. And that's what my sister and her companions were doing when they stood on that sidewalk in Singapore. It's a mindset that you have to grow up with here. Otherwise, you're a moron. And if you get hit by a vehicle while crossing the road, it's your fault.

There are a number of problems with this unwritten law.

First, it's inevitable for pedestrians to absolutely avoid disturbing the vehicles' velocities when they are crossing the road. And the drivers know that. So, what the drivers do is, when they see pedestrians waiting to cross the road, they maintain their velocity or they drive faster so that the the road would *not* look like it will be clear of cars for a long enough time for pedestrians to cross. As an effect, the pedestrians do not cross. And the drivers go on their merry little freaking ways.

A usual consequence of this is that pedestrians get fed up waiting for minutes just to be able to cross the road. So they take the risk and take small steps forward to signify that they want to cross. But this act threatens the drivers' need for (undisturbed) speed even more, so the drivers go a notch higher in employing their tactics and they drive faster than ever. The pedestrians either retreat (in which case they go back to the situation in the previous paragraph) or they persist (in which case one of the three numbered scenarios above probably takes place).

Another problem is that, in that unwritten law, the responsibility to avoid accidents is placed on the pedestrian and not the drivers. That's just outright ridiculous. There wouldn't even be the slightest danger of having that accident if there were no such things as vehicles and drivers. Isn't it that, for anybody wishing to live in a desirable society, power entails responsibility? Isn't it that power, in this case, is in the hands of the drivers and not the pedestrians? I swear, sometimes I wish I was a ferrokinetic (manipulator of metallic matter...sort of like Magneto from X-men) so I could let drivers feel what it feels like when somebody exercises power over them without the slightest sense of responsibility.

At the center of the whole issue is the drivers' refusal to bring down their vehicles' velocities to reasonable levels that would allow pedestrians to cross. In short, the drivers' refusal to stop feeding their need for speed. If we are to do something about this issue, we need to get rid of this mindset where drivers feel that they lose a lot when they slow down. That mindset is totally unreasonable, dangerous, and not to mention, lethal. Drivers do not lose as much as the pedestrians do when the accidents occur. So what if you're thrown forward due to the sudden drop in your vehicle's velocity? Big deal. That kid you ran over just lost his life.

I wonder where this kind of mindset originated, anyway. Is that how far we've strayed from our humanity? We're just given a set of wheels and we so easily forget what it's like to walk on our two legs? Do we not remember anymore the simple techniques of stopping or slowing down in order to avoid bumping people when we travel on foot? And then we still get the audacity to think that it's those pedestrians' fault that they get injured or even killed? Those pesky, primitive, low-tech, weak, fragile, dust-inhaling, accident-prone, slow-moving, endangered, mortal, dying bipedal beings!

Earlier I said that I'd be writing this post from the perspective of a pedestrian and not a vehicle. I was only joking then, but as I came to the latter parts of this entry, I'd say it was very appropriate for me to say that. For anybody who possesses that need-for-speed mindset I was talking about, I don't see them as bipedal human beings anymore. And they may deny that in the surface level, but deep down in their psyche, they see themselves for the same thing I see them for. That's why they crave for the velocity.

They're not humans anymore.

They're vehicles.