True to its vision to proactively resolve the needs of the industry stakeholders, motorcycle riders and community safety, the Motorcycle Development Program Participants Association (MDPPA) concluded 2021 with a series of Generation Road Safety webinars among selected schools’ students and alumni.
Despite on-going lockdown and limited mobility of the general public due to COVID-19, Metro Manila Accident Reporting Analysis System (MMARAS) still recorded a total of 65,032 accidents in the country’s main metropolitan area in 2020, with 337 deaths. With these statistics, MDPPA, through its Generation Road Safety (GRS) Project, partnered with Dualtech Training Center- Canlubang, Colegio de San Juan de Letran Calamba, and Divine Word College of Vigan to mitigate, if not totally eradicate, road mishaps primarily due to human errors and mechanical defects.
“Road safety is one of MDPPA’s advocacies and we want to propagate road safety in the Philippines because of the alarming number of road crashes in the country. A big chunk of these recorded accidents is because of human errors, and this is something we wanted to address,” shared by Mr. Norminio Mojica, MDPPA President. “By attending this seminar, you are giving yourself and your family a precious gift by knowing what road safety is,” he added.
This series of Generation Road Safety Projects focused on instilling a culture of disciplined, responsible, and safety-conscious next generations of riders. It covered rigorous technical explanations of the critical motorcycle parts and the importance on why these parts should be checked on a daily basis. This also tackled most common misconceptions on safety and how a single, avoidable mishap could negatively affect all road users. Towards the end of each webinar, MDPPA hoped that the students’ voice and influence could crystallize these basic safety concepts and to mobilize communities to be partakers of building safer roads for all.
Ms. Yolanda Lazo, Senior High School Principal of Letran Calamba, where an overwhelming 150 student-attendees was charted, said, “We thank MDPPA in giving our students invaluable opportunity to learn while also having their driving skills assessed.”
There were also around 250 students and alumni from Dualtech Training Center who attended the webinar on December 04, 2021, and another hundred attendees from the north, as MDPPA partnered with Divine Word College of Vigan last December 18, 2021. There would be another set of webinar series among schools starting February 2022.
Early this year of 2021, there were also series of similar webinar for riders, teens, and kids during the months of June and July which benefited 300 participants. It was also during those months that the Generation Road Safety Campaign, that includes table talk, and road safety stories, was launched. To members of the Association namely; Honda Phils., Inc (HPI), Kawasaki Motorcycle Phils. Corp (KMPC), Suzuki Phils. (SPH) and Yamaha Motorcycle Phils (YMPH), had also benefited 30,000 riders, collectively on their own company-initiated Road Safety campaigns.
The said initiatives, which aimed to equip students, riders or not, on the basics of motorcycle riding and safety, was facilitated by Gilmar P. de Castro, MDPPA’s Industry Specialist, spearheaded by Jun Lomibao, Road Safety Committee Chair and Mr. Norminio Mojica, MDPPA President.
(Gilmar P. de Castro)
