Killer highway
>> Monday, December 9, 2013
EDITORIAL
Halsema Highway has
once again claimed the lives of two persons o Nov. 30, one of them Eufemia Lamen,
the president of the Mountain Province Polytechnique College. (See related article
on page 1 for more details.) Every now and then, accidents happened along the
highway which resulted to loss of lives and property.
The government, through the Department of Public Works and Highways had instituted measures to prevent such accidents by widening and improving the road including setting up roadside rails but apparently these were not enough.
If there had been a guard rail along the roadside where the van plunged 50 meters below, maybe it could have prevented the vehicle from going down.
Over the years, a lot of travellers have lost their lives along the highway owing to lack of guard rails, vehicle malfunction, overloading or human error on the part of the driver.
In the case of last week’s accident, the driver was reported to have slept while driving. Be that as it may, a guard rail could have prevented the vehicle from falling down.
It is high time the government builds more guard rails along the stretch of the highway and if possible complete their construction from Benguet to Mountain Province where most accidents have occurred wherein vehicles plunged down mountainsides.
Such guard rails should be sturdy enough to withstand collision. Otherwise these would be useless obstacles which block the panoramic scenery of green mountains and the sky.
Considering that the stretch of the Halsema Highway was concretized, it is high time government allot more funds for setting up guard rails along roadsides of the vital thoroughfare instead of being the butt of controversy like the alleged misuse of taxpayers’ money like the priority development assistance fund (PDAF.)
The government, through the Department of Public Works and Highways had instituted measures to prevent such accidents by widening and improving the road including setting up roadside rails but apparently these were not enough.
If there had been a guard rail along the roadside where the van plunged 50 meters below, maybe it could have prevented the vehicle from going down.
Over the years, a lot of travellers have lost their lives along the highway owing to lack of guard rails, vehicle malfunction, overloading or human error on the part of the driver.
In the case of last week’s accident, the driver was reported to have slept while driving. Be that as it may, a guard rail could have prevented the vehicle from falling down.
It is high time the government builds more guard rails along the stretch of the highway and if possible complete their construction from Benguet to Mountain Province where most accidents have occurred wherein vehicles plunged down mountainsides.
Such guard rails should be sturdy enough to withstand collision. Otherwise these would be useless obstacles which block the panoramic scenery of green mountains and the sky.
Considering that the stretch of the Halsema Highway was concretized, it is high time government allot more funds for setting up guard rails along roadsides of the vital thoroughfare instead of being the butt of controversy like the alleged misuse of taxpayers’ money like the priority development assistance fund (PDAF.)
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