1, 2, or none

BENEATH the spreading boughs of the fire tree, its flowers aflame and spreading like wildfire, the city sizzles in the heat of a long dry summer. So hot, so humid, so little rain dur­ing the rainy season.

Comes now the incoming sea­son – back to school, kids! – and our heroic teachers, fresh from election duty, are once again at their “Balik Eskwela” chores, for the love of their students. Inspec­tors, carpenters, house painters, janitors, their work, being (most­ly) women, is never done.

The women, many of them teachers, who ride motorcycles with their men have yet to be heard from, but what does Teach­er think of the motorcycle crime prevention act?

As motorcycles have been growing rapidly in numbers, rid­ers have a right to expect to be protected against rider-criminals, too.

Amid the vroom and zoom gen­erated by the controversy over the “doble plaka” (two license plates) law, are we to infer that it’s those plates that will keep rid­ing-in-tandem crimes down?

How one or two plates or none will stop such dastardly acts is a stretch of the imagination. We all know how assassins use the law to hide their faces by wearing their safety helmets as provided by law. Whether they have one or two plates, whether big or small, they can and do get away with murder by covering the figures with mud. They could also kidnap someone else’s motorcycle and never return it. (Do you recall that TV footage of a trio of po­licemen who were caught in their safe house with a small fleet of stolen bikes?)

In Vigan and a few other cities, helmets are not allowed within city limits, and correctly so. Rid­ers do not need speed on busy city streets. But killers use their helmets in broad daylight or in the dark to shoot their victims. And make a quick getaway, with their helmets on for their safety and protection as provided by law.

To protect riders of all stripes, the good and the bad, the crimi­nal and the innocent, all should be required to wear white, in par­ticular at night. Not black. Black renders them all but invisible. In­visibility is precisely what killers want.