BGC ralliers demand safer streets

Children get involved in a march to demand that drivers learn the importance of road rules and pedestrian safety at the BGC in Taguig City. RICHARD REYES

Australian national Jacinta Coote recalled how she raged inside when she saw the footage of the May 12 accident at a crossing in Bonifacio Global City (BGC) in which two “careless” motorists nearly killed her and the child in her womb.

If only they had bothered to stop at the intersection, said the 34-year-old Coote who was still recovering from her injuries which included facial wounds requiring surgery to implant screws and titanium plates. “What was so important that they were in such a hurry?” she asked in a recent Inquirer interview.

Half of her head was still numb and she could not lift her right arm, she said. There was also “a little bit of internal hemorrhaging, I think, just near the baby.” She has yet to regain her sense of taste or smell.

Her injuries, however, have not prevented her from making a public statement. A day after being discharged from the hospital, Coote and her husband, Douglas, joined about 200 fellow BGC residents Friday afternoon for a “family walk” demanding safer streets in their community. With several expatriates and their small children among the participants, the mass action was a rarity in the upscale residential and commercial hub in Taguig City.

For the event organizer, a friend of the Cootes who wished to be known only as T. Nguyen, their message was simple: Drivers should follow rules  even without authorities around. Nguyen, who also hails from Australia, recounted Jacinta’s ordeal and invited the public to the walk in an Inquirer article on June 21.

The parade started at Burgos Circle and passed through 2nd Avenue and 30th Street, the intersecting roads where two speeding SUVs collided before one of them hit Coote as she was crossing on the pedestrian lane at 11:15 a.m. on May 12. She was just out to buy bananas for her daughter.

The police identified the SUV drivers as Rolando Manese and Anne Allison Soriano, the latter also a BGC resident. The investigation showed that it was Manese’s vehicle that hit Coote after it was rammed by Soriano’s.

The Cootes declined to comment on the status of the case. Nguyen earlier wrote that they have yet to receive an apology from both drivers.

During Friday’s activity, Jacinta could already walk, although Douglas stood nearby, ready with her wheelchair. At one point, the participants let out loud boos when they saw a red car that just kept going despite a signal to let pedestrians pass.

The walk—where the kids had balloons while the grownups held a tarpaulin showing the battered bodies of road crash victims—was over in less than an hour.

But as Nguyen put it, the steps for real change should not stop there: “We need to teach the importance of road rules and pedestrian safety. It’s a mindset that we need to [instill]; the behavior, the culture.”

“Every driver should think: ‘Okay, I will drive carefully today. That’s all I have to do.’ You don’t have to wait for the government to pass laws,” added Coote, who has started “trying to live normally again” by going out for lunch with her husband and taking her daughter to school earlier that day. -Kristine Felisse Mangunay