Ideas for Reducing Bus Accidents

I've been on a personal campaign to decrease bus accidents ever since a reckless driver crashed his bus into my car. Unfortunately, it's tough to get reforms because these bus companies can pay off the authorities or use their clout (some of these are owned by police and military officers).

It had to take the death of a celebrity to wake us up. That's good enough for me.

If government is really intent on stopping this menace, it could do the following:

1. Revoke the permit of any bus company whose bus kills people.
2. Revoke permits of bus operators who figure in two minor accidents (eg, scrapes, etc).
3. Make a monthly report of number of people killed in traffic accidents, naming the bus companies involved in these mishaps.
4. Require annual inspection of buses, including a review of permits and driver's licenses. Scratches, dents, etc in the buses should mean suspension of the company.

Note that I singled out buses here but these could also apply to other public utility vehicle operators.

More expensive fuel means less traffic

On the brighter side of the perpetually rising cost of gas, Metro Manila's streets have become decongested. My proof is more anecdotal. I used to tear my hair out because of the craziness of the clogged and noisy streets. But now, even during rush hour, the streets are less noisy and there is less traffic when I drive out.

Of course, some of the decongestion can be attributed to the efforts of Metro Manila Development Authority (MMDA) to get rid of illegal buses, taxis and the lot. But even the MMDA cannot be that efficient and it only took high gas prices to achieve what the lack of political will could not. 

After all, the streets became almost quiet and empty in the span of a few days and there is an eerie feeling of being in a sci-fi movie-- one where aliens pointed a ray gun on Metro Manila and zapped three-quarters of the vehicles. This is an effect that the pitiable efforts of MMDA could lay claim to.

And now for a quick review of the rippling impact of this development:

• Less people will go out to the malls.
• More peaceful streets, smoother commute/drive.
• But will also mean less business for malls (notably restaurants and other shops).
• Still, food deliveries will thrive. 
• If we had a better e-commerce industry, this would have gained a needed boost as more people would prefer to buy things online and have them delivered.
• Yet, I hope there was better mass transportation. More people have now be forced to use public transportation but the MRT, as most of us know, cannot absorb this increase in volume. 

Designing the Customer Experience

It's a fancy term for a very much-needed concept that should be basic in all businesses: customer experience design. It means improving a business service by designing the process around the customer (instead of making the customer adjust to shoddy procedure).

Everyone has had a taste of bad customer experience design: making us wait in queue for a long time (whether you're lining up in a bank or calling customer service); filling up five copies of forms with 10,000 fields and no carbon paper; an application process that requires you to go from one building to another, taking up one whole day of your life, etc etc.

Government agencies and banks are notorious for bad customer experience design. And so are internet service providers. We recently switched to SmartBro, which came highly recommended by a friend -- a techie friend for that matter -- and that put a lot of weight on his recommendation.

But SmartBro's user experience design is neanderthal, to say the least. We were unlucky enough to have a faulty connection (each time it rains, we lose the SmartBro internet connection).



Worst, there was no way to contact tech support. There are only two ways to call for help in SmartBro. First is by email and second is by phone.

Email was not really an option since we didn't have internet service, anyway. Moreover, stupidly enough, everytime there's a problem getting a connection to the SmartBro antenna, a web page (which I presume runs locally, since there's no internet in the first place) gets displayed telling us there was an error and that we are to call tech support. Unfortunately, there was no phone number in that message and since we did not have internet, we could not surf the SmartBro website for the number!

This trivial addition would have gone a long way in customer service, but no thanks to SmartBro.



And what about the telephone number? We called it up and had to go through a series of recorded messages, asking us to click a couple of buttons. You know those voice messages -- they will ask you to "Press 1 to know more about promotions, Press 2 to know more about promotions, Press 3 to know more about exciting promotions..." If we wanted to know more about promotions, we would not be calling the tech support line. A tech support line should respond quickly!

SmartBro's support line was #4 in the heirarchy of recorded messages, so I had to wait for messages 1-3 before I could get to tech support. Which turned out to be a recording of "Umagang Kay Ganda". After hearing the song played for 2-3 minues, I gave up. (My wife had more patience, waiting for 5 minutes or more).

Update: It's 27 July, we still don't have Internet service and we still have not successfully contacted their tech support line!

Rizal on a License Plate

The purpose of a license plate is to quickly identify the vehicle. This is why in most sane countries, license plates contain no other elements but letters and numbers, using clear, large font sizes.

In our country, some bright bureaucrat probably got a brainstorm and changed the design of our license plates into something more... "beautiful".

I am referring to the license plates that started appearing in about 2004 or thereabouts. You know, the ones that have the Rizal Monument in the middle and a blue or yellow sky in the background.

What's wrong with the design changes in the license plates?

The insertion of the phallic monument distracts the eye and introduces an unwelcome break at the center of the license number. So, let's say a car just ran over the mayor and good-samaritan you were trying to memorize the plates of the car -- say, XYZ 371 -- Rizal's monument now interrupts your flow of thought like so: "the car's license number is X-Y-Z -- uhm Rizal phallic symbol -- 3-7... what was that number again?"




On top of this, our bright bureaucrat also decided to emphasize the phrase "MATATAG NA REPUBLIKA", taking up more real estate in the plates. In other words, the font sizes of the license number now had to be decreased to accommodate the new line of text. The license number itself is now smaller and more difficult to read!

Finally, the blue or yellow background in the sky obscures the license number! These are such basic principles in design:

• Provide good contrast between the background and the words, to improve readability!


• In crowded spaces, omit everything but the most important information! (meaning, no distracting monuments, please!)

This, if ever, shows bad design taste or utter ignorance from our Land Transportation Office (LTO), from which the license plates originate. Just look at the stickers that LTO also produces. If you have a car, check the LTO registration sticker that you have to display on your windshield. The year "2007" is so small because LTO had to insert its logo. Plus its green font on a green background.

If you look at the other side of the sticker, you'll see more clutter. There is a long sentence and a slogan (something like, I AM A GOOD CITIZEN AND I KEEP INTERSECTIONS OPEN, and BY THE WAY, THE NAME OF THE CURRENT LTO CHIEF IS BLAHBLAHBLAH). You'll probably smash your car just reading the back of this sticker.




Photos by Data Canlas.

Displaying Our Flag

Pop quiz. On June 12, when you hang the flag vertically, which color should be on the left field? Red or blue?

A decor, whether trivial or important, will reflect the care and thoughtfulness that went into its creation. This manifests in our everyday rituals as individuals and citizens, like displaying our flag during independence day. I have noticed that more and more, we have become careless in displaying our flags on June 12 (if we even care to display the flag at all).

For instance, this year, while driving eastward along Ayala Avenue, I caught local government employees hanging flags the wrong way around on lampposts in the middle of the street. They were hanging the flags vertically, triangle pointing downward, with the red field on the left -- an arrangement reserved for war.

I took a photograph on my cellphone camera, just to make sure. One could argue that the flags were being displayed to appear correct from the opposite lane. (Check out the second photo, at the center and a bit down to the right, you will see the flag on the opposite lane).


But that is not right, since, on the opposite lane, if you were westbound, you would see the other flag also being displayed in reverse. A few weeks later, passing through Ayala again, I noticed that they had corrected their error and thus brought back peace in Ayala Avenue.
Moreover, the flags were made of see-through material. Even if they were displayed correctly from one side, they would always show up wrong from the opposite side.

The Makati government could have simplified this by putting the two flags back-to-back and mounting them at the center of the lamp posts. This back-to-back arrangement would have shown correctly on both lanes.

The points that are easily missed are this. We have forgotten how to display our flag in the proper manner. And, when we do remember to display our flag, we don't even care enough to make it look right from all angles.

And this was not just happening in Ayala Avenue. In Megamall, all stores displayed the flag correctly on their glass windows, if you were outside of the store looking in. But once you went inside the store and looked outwards, the flags would be signifying war!

I observed this on other malls like Robinsons Galleria. The only good flag-displays I found were in The Podium. Here, the stores took the extra effort to put two flags back-to-back so that they displayed correctly inside and outside. Others also took a safer approach by showing the flag horizontally (with blue field on top, of course).

Now *there's* another simple idea! Why not just display the flag, horizontally, or in landscape direction as we call it nowadays? That would avoid the cost of an extra flag and the extra effort of putting two of them back-to-back.