Steering Wheel

Cars have become remarkably good at worrying about us. They can warn when we are drifting out of a lane, tell us when another vehicle has entered our blind spot, apply the brakes when we fail to notice something ahead, and, in some cases, even keep themselves pointed in the right direction while traffic crawls along. It is an extraordinary development, particularly in a country where driving is akin to participating in a live-action negotiation with several hundred strangers. The problem is that the smarter the car becomes, the greater the temptation for us to become slightly less smart ourselves.

The electric vehicle has arrived in the Philippines with a promise familiar to anyone who has spent an afternoon crawling along EDSA: less dependence on gasoline, quieter motoring, and a little less money disappearing into the fuel tank. It’s an appealing proposition. The only complication is that the Filipino road has never been particularly interested in making life easy for anyone.

A car can tell you many things. It can tell you that a door is open, a tire needs air, a passenger has forgotten to buckle up, or that you are getting dangerously close to the vehicle in front of you. What it cannot tell you is why you have been sitting in the same spot for 23 minutes. This is the peculiar economics of driving in the Philippines. We fork over a great deal of money buying cars that can go very fast, and then spend a considerable portion of our lives making sure they do not.

There are two kinds of Filipino motorists: those looking for a parking space and those who have already found one and are determined not to tell you where it is. Parking has become one of the more demanding sports in modern Philippine life. It requires patience, spatial awareness, quick reflexes, and, occasionally, the ability to stare at another motorist for several seconds without saying anything that could get you into trouble.