When laws become suggestions

YOU'RE driving, say on Ortigas, toward Edsa and see the traffic light showing a green arrow. You prepare to turn left, only to realize that several hundred buses, jeeps and cars are coming through on Edsa, like a horde of elephants ready to trample you down.

What happened was that a traffic aide took over and was giving instructions exactly opposite to what the traffic lights were signaling. If you saw the traffic aide (and you're bound not to if you were looking at the traffic light suspended up in the air), you would have stopped on green. Consider yourself lucky if you're not ticketed for a traffic violation... or worse. I've had at least two friends who got into accidents because they obeyed the traffic lights, not knowing a policeman or traffic aide had taken over.

Such scenes are repeated hundreds of times each day in Metro Manila. Supposedly, the traffic aides' manual directing of traffic is more efficient because they can adjust the flow of vehicles according to the number of cars. Thus, even if the traffic light is red, they'll tell you to proceed if there aren't cars coming in the other direction.

Granting that this manual directing helps ease up traffic, I will say it does more harm in the long run because it reinforces the very serious cognitive dissonance that's behind our traffic problems.

Let me explain that fancy term. In the 1950s, the psychologist Leon Festinger first wrote about this phenomenon of cognitive dissonance, a psychological state where the individual is caught between two conflicting cognitive states. We see this every day in our traffic situation. The traffic light may be red, which many of us remember, from our books way back in Grade One, means "stop," but the traffic aide is furiously signaling you, "Go, stupid, go."

It's not just a matter of disregarding traffic lights. I'm often caught in a situation where the policeman or traffic aide orders you to take over the opposite lanes to create a counter-flow, sometimes even while standing next to a sign that reads, "No Counter-flow Allowed." I loathe these counter-flows, finding them grossly unfair because you're really jumping the queue.

The policemen and traffic aides are making you create these counter-flows, again supposedly to keep the traffic flowing. It doesn't, because although you move up the line, you eventually have to merge back into the correct lanes. This is a major cause of gridlocks, as traffic flow is jammed in all directions. Yet I'm sure the majority of Filipino drivers will say it's OK to do counter-flows because they've seen the police ordering them.

Festinger wrote that people will find ways to reduce the dissonance, reconfiguring their minds to resolve the conflicts. One of the earliest columns I did, about five years back, was about an encounter I had with a taxi driver who had run a red light. When I protested, he smiled and calmly explained to me that traffic lights were only suggestions. Cognitive dissonance solved.

At that time my friends found the story amusing, some even thinking I was joking. These days when I share that anecdote, people claim they've heard similar arguments from other drivers, friends and relatives. I suspect we're slowly getting to the point of no return where the majority of local drivers believe traffic rules and regulations are only suggestions, especially if there is no one looking.

The latest MMDA traffic experiments are bound to worsen this terrible culture, with the Quezon Memorial Circle being the most extreme breeding site. For weeks now, the Circle has become one racing track, vehicles speeding around without ever needing to stop, except, very rarely, for pedestrians to cross. Yet, the traffic lights are still there, religiously blinking away green, yellow and red, functioning now as Christmas lights. Stop on a red light and you can get into a terrible accident with the speeding cars behind you.

Not only that, on the Circle, there are no rules on how you should switch lanes. You're in the innermost and realize you need to turn right into one of the avenues. What should you do? No problem. Just hold your breath and swerve. The same "rule" applies for vehicles coming in from one of the avenues into the Circle. Only in the Philippines have I seen vehicles moving diagonally across nine lanes in nine seconds!

I know MMDA officials mean well, hoping to keep vehicles moving. That's why they also have all these experiments on Edsa and Quezon Boulevard where they've banned most left and right turns on intersections. This allows motorists to just drive straight through, again disregarding all the blinking traffic lights. But I wonder if commuting time is actually reduced. You breeze along but only for as long as you don't need to turn. If you do, then you have to find one of those rare U-turn slots, which means a descent into hell as four or five lanes of desperate motorists compete with you for the two-lane slot. The time you saved racing along is eaten up negotiating the U-turn slots, with a lot of dangerous adrenaline pumped through your body.

Again, in the long run, anticipate new problems. In most countries, U-turns are discouraged because they are inefficient, clogging up traffic or causing accidents. But because the MMDA has created all these U-turn slots, watch motorists all over the country create their own slots. Add that to the older problems of do-it-yourself counter-flows, lane swerving and running through a red light, and you have a recipe for major disasters.

I have some simple suggestions for the MMDA. One is to turn off the traffic lights if you have an aide or policeman. The traffic lights on Quezon Memorial Circle should be used, for the sake of motorists and pedestrians. And the counter-flows? They just aren't helpful at all, in the short or long term.

When our law enforcers tell us those rules are only suggestions, there can be no talk of discipline at all. Be clear and be consistent about law enforcement, and the discipline will follow. Otherwise, it's a mad free-for-all world out there, a concrete jungle in the worst sense of the term.

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