BRRRRR.....

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I don't know whose bright idea this is, but it seems like someone had a field day last year installing rumble strips on the national highway in Laguna. If I'm not mistaken, there are about seven or eight sets from Halang in Calamba to just before the road going up to PCARRD and Jamboree in Los Banos.

Yes, these are traffic calming solutions that alert sleepy drivers and remind them to slow down because they are approaching a highly dangerous area; however, four sets of rumbling strips with less than two hundred metres between each set has become excessive that it's plain silly! Each time my car passes over one set, I fear that parts of my car would fall apart! Then there would be another set in about two seconds! This is at the Monte Vista area in Pansol. Wouldn't it take just one rumbling strip set per accident-prone area to jolt a driver awake from the monotony of the road (if the obstacle course of a southbound expressway at its present state can be called monotonous)? 

Now that's just the drivers' point of view. How do the residents take this relatively new installation on the highway? I would presume that if these strips could wake drivers up (who just go through these strips once on a trip in each direction), then the people living along the highway would always be jarred awake with the BRRRRRRRRRRR sounds every single time a vehicle passes by. And with many vehicles passing using this bit of road, a lot of people must be losing sleep. Indeed, I think that some have begun thinking that these strips are a nuisance... a set of strips looked as if they have been scraped off or flattened near the water district pumping station in Bucal... these would no longer be of any use to warn drivers that there is a railroad crossing up ahead.

So, once again, I'm in a quandary: these rumble strips bring "music" to my ears and wake me up when I get drowsy while driving. On the other hand, these strips could damage the car. I certainly don't like these strips, but is it worth tearing them down, as apparently being done by the people living along the highway, who probably shouldn't even be living in that area? Destroying these strips is certainly a lot of government money (I assume that the government had these installed after a lot of thought and planning) gone to waste.

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