*Dr. Rodolfo John Ortiz Teope, PhD, EdD, DM
I still carry the weight of that evening in December 2009, along Masinag, Antipolo, Rizal, the way one carries a bruise long after the skin has healed.
I was stopped—completely trapped in traffic. My SUV wasn’t inching forward, wasn’t swerving, and wasn’t doing anything at all. It was one of those familiar gridlocks where engines hum, tempers simmer, and everyone just waits. My foot was firmly on the brake. Vehicles boxed me in on all sides. I remember thinking only of getting home.
Then the sound came—metal screaming against metal.
A motorcycle burst through the traffic, wild and impatient. There were two riders, neither wearing a helmet. They were forcing speed into a space that simply did not exist, angry at the standstill, gambling with everyone else’s safety. In an instant, they slammed into my SUV.
The impact was violent. Both riders were thrown onto the road. There was blood, shouting, and confusion. People rushed in. Time slowed into that sickening stretch where you realize lives have been altered in seconds. Both riders were injured—seriously—but nobody died. I stepped out immediately, shaken, already bracing myself to help, to cooperate, to do what any decent human being would do.
Then the police arrived.
What I expected—what any reasonable person would expect—was a careful reconstruction of facts: I was stopped. I was hit. I had nowhere to go. Instead, the air shifted. The questions hardened. Jail was mentioned. Detention was discussed. I was told—almost casually—that I could still be charged with reckless imprudence resulting in serious physical injury and that criminal liability was “possible.”
I remember standing there, traffic roaring back into my ears, thinking, "How did this turn into me?"
How does a man who was not moving become the accused?
How does being hit become being blamed?
In that moment, I felt something colder than fear. I felt small. Replaceable. As if truth itself had stepped aside to make room for paperwork and shortcuts.
What followed was not justice. It was pressure wrapped in polite language. Soft voices suggesting that things could be “fixed.” Gentle reminders about how long cases drag on, how detention—even temporary—can ruin reputations, and how court appearances drain time, money, and peace of mind. No one said it outright, but the message was unmistakable: fight the system and suffer, or settle and go home.
So I did what countless Filipinos are quietly forced to do every day. I negotiated my innocence. I paid ₱20,000—not because I was guilty, not because I was reckless, but because I wanted to leave that place as a free man. Because I did not want to spend even one night in a cell trying to explain how standing still became a crime.
I walked away free. But something in me stayed behind on that road in Masinag.
That day taught me a painful truth: in the Philippines, innocence is fragile. It does not protect you. It does not shield you from accusation. Often, it merely slows the damage. What truly protects you is compromise—your ability to settle, to pay, to escape before the machinery of injustice fully locks in.
This is why incidents like the recent LRT-1 case, where a driver who appears to have done nothing wrong is immediately eyed for criminal liability after a tragic accident, resonate deeply with me. I recognize the pattern. I recognize the fear. I recognize that quiet dread of realizing that logic and facts may not be enough.
This is not justice. This is panic looking for a target.
Our system has a habit of confusing injury with criminality. When someone gets hurt, the law does not always ask who was negligent or what actually caused the incident. Too often, it asks, who is nearest and easiest to charge? Presence becomes guilt. Proximity becomes a fault. The concept of reckless imprudence—meant to punish real carelessness—is stretched until it becomes a net that traps the innocent simply because they were there.
And there is a darker consequence to this defect: it has become predictable—and therefore exploitable.
Because the law is vague, because enforcement is sloppy, and because accusation comes easier than investigation, a new class of opportunists has quietly emerged. There are now manufactured “victims”—scammers who stage or exaggerate accidents, who weaponize injury and sympathy, and who know exactly how to trigger fear in motorists. They know that drivers are terrified of detention and criminal records. They know that police intervention often escalates anxiety instead of clarifying truth. And they know that, more often than not, paying is cheaper than proving innocence.
This is no longer just a problem of poor policing. It is a structural failure of the law itself.
That is why this cannot be solved by reminders or internal memos alone. The Legislature must act. Congress must pass a clear, humane, and modern law that draws a firm line between accidents and criminal negligence. A law that explicitly protects motorists who are stationary, compliant, and exercising due care. A law that requires evidence-based investigation before criminal charges are even contemplated. And a law that punishes fabricated claims and staged accidents as crimes in their own right.
Without legislative reform, reckless imprudence will continue to be abused—not to punish wrongdoing, but to extort fear. Without reform, scammers will continue to thrive in the gray areas of the law. And without reform, ordinary Filipinos will keep learning the same bitter lesson I learned years ago: that survival often depends not on truth, but on how quickly you can escape the system.
The law should exist to protect the innocent, not to frighten them into submission. Until Congress confronts this defect head-on, justice will remain negotiable—available only to those who can afford to buy their way out.
And as long as that remains true, the most dangerous thing on Philippine roads will not be reckless driving.
It will be being innocent—and being there.
__________________
*About the author:
