With four days more to go before the New Year rings in 2024, the number of vehicular accidents in the province of Catanduanes this year is expected to increase by more than 25 percent compared to the 2022 total.
Preliminary data from the Catanduanes Police Provincial Office showed that from January 1 to December 19, 2023, mishaps involving vehicles of all kinds have reached a total of 336, which is 69 more than the 267 tallied last year.
The same data indicated that for the first 11 months of the year, an average of 28 accidents occurred on the island’s province’s thoroughfares or roughly one per day.
Majority of the incidents were recorded in the capital town of Virac with 183, which is already 27 or 17 percent, greater than the 156 recorded in the whole of 2022.
Coming up behind Virac is Bato with 41, San Andres with 37, San Miguel with 14, Viga with 13, and Pandan with 12.
Logging road accidents of less than 10 in number are Gigmoto with just six (6) and Bagamanoc, Baras, Caramoran and Panganiban with five (5) each.
Among the 11 towns, it is actually Viga which has the highest increase in vehicular accidents, quadrupling its 2022 total of just two (2) to a high of 13 incidents as of Dec. 19 or an uptick of 550 percent.
It is followed by Pandan, which saw its 2022 figure of three accidents zoom up to 12 so far this year, or a hike of 300 percent, and Bato, with its 41 total about 57 percent higher than last year’s 26 cases.
The Virac police station, according to a report forwarded to the Tribune, stated that the 183 cases of Reckless Imprudence resulted in two homicides or deaths, 93 with physical injuries, and 100 involving damage to property.
Last week, two more accidents occurred in Virac and Baras as per official police reports.
On Dec. 17, 2023 at about 2:40 PM, a San Andres-registered Kawasaki Barako tricycle driven by Leonardo Fernando Jr., 57, of barangay Lictin, was carrying six (6) passengers on its way to Virac when it was struck by an oncoming Honda RS150 motorcycle driven by Adolfo Robles, Jr., 28, of barangay Rizal and reportedly a tracking agent of ACC Paramount Splash.
Initial investigation showed that the tricycle had just reached the curved portion of the national highway at Purok 4, Palta Small, Virac when the speeding motorcycle encroached its lane and collided with the tricycle.
Two of the tricycle’s passengers – a COMELEC employee and the driver’s wife – sustained injuries when they were thrown out of their backride seat. Robles was also hurt in the crash.
Reports claim that five passengers were members of the same family which rented the tricycle for the trip to Virac but the driver decided to pick up his wife along the way.
The COMELEC employee allegedly suffered three fractures on his face during the incident and would require subsequent surgery.
Rescue personnel from Virac MDRRMO and the Philippine Red Cross Emergency Response Unit brought the victims to two hospitals.
In Baras town the following day, John-John Parpan, 42, a laborer from Guinsaanan, was driving a black Mitsubishi Lancer with security guard Rayel Alcantara, 33, of the same village, as his passenger when the right rear wheels of the car fell into the drainage canal at the side of the road.
This caused the driver to lose control of the vehicle, which then collided with a Rusi DLY100 Digger motorcycle without plate number on the opposite lane.
The driver of the motorcycle, San Miguel, Baras SK chairman Jude Arvic Vargas, 22, was injured along with backrider Marivic Vargas, 47, also from the same barangay and presumably his mother.
They were brought by responding Baras MDRRMO personnel to the Eastern Bicol Medical Center for treatment.