A lot of the things I write will be about The Philippines since I am an American expat here.
In the case of this bus, most buses in this country are not safe to ride. The article says the brakes failed and that is quite likely. Most buses and other public transportation have bald tires and belch noxious smoke because the operators are not cognizant of their responsibility to their rider/customers or to public
safety in general. The public conveyances are also usually overloaded to the point of not being safe. They have too much weight for the chassis and the people are packed like sardines, this making any (even minor) incident into a calamity. The one person who escaped injury is probably lucky that he was the last one to be packed in and was standing in the open doorway which offered him the opportunity to jump off.
The air quality in urban areas is abysmal because all public vehicles are not maintained properly and much unburned fuel goes out the exhaust in the form of black smoke. Compounding the problem of ill-maintained fuel and air system in vehiceles is the lack of a muffler in the ubiquitous jeepneys. The drivers tend to try to achive maximum noise because the exhaust system has no muffler and they are very noisy. This behavior causes each upshift to run the engine to max inefficiency and max noise, thus contributing both to noise and smoke pollution. Tourists often marvel at the magnificent sunsets of Manila but they are the direct result of air pollution and nothing really to be proud of.
Back to safety...I have ridden every kind of public vehicle there is in The Philippines except the major ferry boats. The following is an excerpt from an article from 2002 in The Philippine Daily Enquirer, May 15, 2002. Also, the largest loss of life in commercial ocean transport was not the Titanic as many would suggest. Rather it was The
Doña Paz en route from Catbalogan, on Samar Island, Philippines, to Manila on Dec. 20, 1987. It collided with a tanker The Vector.
The Vector's cargo ignited and caused a fire that rapidly spread onto the Doña Paz, which sank within minutes. Two of the 13 crew members aboard the Vector survived but all 58 crew of the Doña Paz died. The official death toll on the ferry is 1,565, although some reports claim that the ferry was overcrowded and that the true death toll is over 4,000. The ships would put the death toll at 4,375 although admitting that only 1,568 were on the manifest (still more than the licensed maximum of 1,518). The 21 (or 24) survivors from the ferry had to swim, as there was no time to launch lifeboats.
An inquiry later revealed that the crew of the Vector was underqualified and that the boat's license had expired.
It is the worst ferry disaster and the worst peace-time maritime disaster in history.
Another smaller disaster involved an overloaded outrigger ferrym The Nilode as described below.
The Nilode accident is an open-and-shut case. It demonstrates, almost too neatly, what happens when safety rules are violated with impunity. The overloading of the boat, up to or even beyond its 30-passenger capacity, is not disputed - not by the Coast Guard, not by the survivors, not by the ferry's surviving crew. One of the crewmen, in fact, recalled instructions being shouted to the passengers, which ordered them not to move too much; literally, not to rock the boat.
The immediate cause of the accident is also a matter of record: passengers riding on the roof of the central cabin stood up and moved over from the left side to the right when the afternoon sun broke through the clouds.
The US FAA has recently downgraded the air industry in The Philippines due to a lack of stringent safety standards for aircraft and facilities but the people simply get outraged and don't address the situation itself.
This country has a terrible record when it comes to passenger safety and most of the fault lies at the feet of the government that does not enforce its own regulations. Personally, I have gotten on a jeepney in queue at a mall and observed the LTO sign on it that lists a max passenger load of 18 but it does not leave until 30 or so people are inside. It appears they only count adults since infants and small children do not pay. Unfortunately, if the thing crashed killing all, it would not say in the headlines, "18 die + 12 non-human children." The headline would read," 30 die in jeepney crash." This same jeepney is one that has cords hanging out of the tires and the front king pins so worn the driver has to swing the steering wheel from side to side simply to keep the thing on the road. Often the driver will have to pump the brakes repeatedly just to slow down for traffic or to pick up passengers. If the lights work, they will usually not be used at night. You CAN, however, ALWAYS see the small light functioning over the destination placard that informs potential passengers of the route. If that light can function, why can't the others?
Until this country takes human safety seriously it will always be consider, and rightfully so, as a third world country.