Very Loud Music of Jeepney Drivers with Poor Hearing
I remembered one time riding this jeepney on my way home from Sucat bound to Baclaran-Roxas Boulevard where the driver plays very loud music using his do-it-yourself sound system made of large speakers and a CD player for Desktop PCs. I reached out my payment and it seems like the driver is doing something like talking nonsense to the dispatcher.
As the jeepney accelerated, driver played the music that sounds like a crappy remix of a love song and seems like whenever the passenger reached out their payments, he could not hear a sound whenever a song played on his crappy stereo. There was an instance that a passenger did not disembark on his/her destination because the driver was too fast and the music is too loud that he could not hear the passenger shout “para (tagalog word for halt or stop)”, which led to the driver to stop beyond the passenger’s destination.
For more than two decades of riding a jeepney, maybe 30% of them were playing very loud music for enjoyment. Most of the drivers doing that were individuals who are 20 years old up to their late 20s because men like them were pretty much bored driving and collecting payments from passengers.
I wonder if these individuals are fit to drive professionally, or are they the ones who know someone from Land Transportation Office in order to get professional driver’s license as easy as 1-2-3. As we know getting license here in the Philippines is very easy even people who do not know how to drive can get as long as you have money and someone to talk to in order to get what you want.
As I have noticed, drivers like them sucked at driving and just do it for work because those individuals are accident prone. They could not hear the upcoming vehicle, pedestrian, or even a traffic official. And whenever an accident happened, they would just say “Kayo naman me kasalanan e, di kayo tumitingin (It’s your fault, you did not look)” and not pay for any damage caused by their recklessness.
So far, I’ve learned that we need to play with their games and pretend that it’s just normal even though it’s not. All I can say that people like them should be taught a basic driving lesson, have them examined properly (tests for professional drivers should be given a professional test that it is more difficult to pass for quality purposes).
