Have you ever wondered why you see so many motorcyclists parked some 50 meters before a checkpoint?
Well, what we’ve suspected for the longest time is finally out in the open – there are thousands of unlicensed drivers and unregistered vehicles (mostly motorcycles) in Dumaguete City’s streets!
The Highway Patrol Group made this revelation in a forum in Dumaguete City last week.
The latest data from the HPG says there are 42,159 registered motorcycles in the City. This translates to one motorcycle for nearly every two people in Dumaguete, touted as the Motorcycle Capital of the Philippines.
But wait–the ratio could still be narrower, considering the unregistered motorcycles in the City. The HPG believes there are thousands of motorcycles that are not registered, but they couldn’t give a definite number (precisely because they’re unregistered).
(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});
And while we’re at it, there’s also this disturbing information that thousands of drivers here also do not have licenses. Official data shows that Dumaguete only has 28,546 drivers’ licenses. Definitely, if we subtract that from the number of registered motorcycles, you can surmise that nearly one out of two drivers do not have licenses.
How did this happen? Surely, there could only be three reasons – The LTO couldn’t act fast enough, Motorcyclists don’t care to get a license or register their vehicles and the third, motorcycle dealers just sell units without registering them.
The last thing we want is to get into a hit-and-run incident with these unlicensed drivers and unregistered vehicles because they are not covered with insurance policies and they don’t know the rules of the road.
Something has to change. Weeding them out through the mobile checkpoints is a good step in this direction.
(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});
br />