Pedicabs = Road Cancer

If in case you're the type of person who never really bothers to look out your car's window while you and your manong driver whizzes past the various roads that you take to and from your favorite gimik place, you probably have no idea what I'm talking about. But since it's christmas, I would be nice enough to tell you that this is what we call a pedicab/sidecar/depadyak:

Exhibit A: If you don't know what this is and you're a Filipino, go kill yourself.

And next to overbearing asshole drivers, these are the next worst thing on the road right now (not considering Bayani Fernando's amazingly viral suck-my-cock posters that appear as far as Tagaytay).

(contd)


Don't get me wrong, I do think pedicabs have uses. For those times that you need to carry very heavy things to and from places where there are no buses or jeeps passing by, and it's too impractical to get a taxi, pedicabs are quite useful.

Granted, these things have no carbon footprints, and are probably the only things capable of entering moderately flooded areas during the rainy seasons.

Yes, they have uses but damn if they're not causing just as much trouble.

1. Traveling inside a pedicab on a national road is about as safe as having freewheeling unprotected sex in Quezon Ave. Have you ever seen a road accident involving a car and a pedicab with everybody walking away unharmed? Me neither. These things have no reflectors for night travel, no safety braces, no nothing.

2. Pedicabs don't respect lanes, direction of traffic, stoplights, sidewalks and rules of the road in general. They're basically like unruly pedestrians with heavy rusty metal tacked onto them. I can't recall how many times I almost got run over by a pedicab on a one-way street because it was going against the traffic, and I can't begin to count how many times I almost crashed into one while driving because it tried to create lane # 2.5 on the road. Bad bit here is the rule of accidents in this country is that whoever has a smaller vehicle and bigger damage is always the victim - even if the goddamn pedicab dove in front of you with a signboard that basically says "KILL ME PLS"

3. Pedicab queues are strategically placed in narrow areas, blind street corners, and traffic-prone places, ensuring you'd have a dandy fine time looking at how they're so nicely positioned while you wait in the traffic jam that they're causing. Do we really need so many of them? It's like for every one person who needs a pedicab, there's 15 waiting for a ride. Which takes me to point #4.

4. People get lazy, nuff sed.

Once upon a time, these things weren't allowed on national roads. Like here in Manila, a few years back, Mayor Atienza forced them to stay where they're not as likely to end up as road fodder.

Oh what I'd do to go back to those good ol' days.