The Criminologist

NCAP: An Organized Chaos

TRAFFIC IN THE Philippines has always been a kind of organized chaos — except that most of the time, the “organized” part is aspirational. While there are traffic rules on paper, on the ground it’s every driver for himself.

The unspoken rule? Break the rules before others break them at your expense. In practice, you swerve before getting swerved, beat the red light before you get stuck, and counterflow because—well—everyone else is doing it.

The irony is, it’s only when accidents happen that drivers suddenly remember the law. They cling to it, not because they respect it, but because they can weaponize it. They point to the rules to pin the blame, minimize their own guilt, and come out the lesser evil in a greater mess.

And the mess is real—our roads are strewn not just with potholes, but with mangled steel and spilled blood. Death is a daily commuter.

THE CULTURE CALLED TRAFFIC

But traffic, believe it or not, is also culture. It is a social system passed down from one driver to the next. You don’t learn how to drive from the Land Transportation Office. You learn it from your kuya who taught you how to do nguso-nguso. You learn it from the tricycle driver who showed you how to singit-singit between buses, SUVs, and life itself. And because singit works—because you get home faster, avoid the gridlock, and feel clever doing it—the behavior is reinforced.

The shortcut becomes the norm, and the law becomes the joke.

Enter the No Contact Apprehension Policy (NCAP).

Suddenly, the cultural logic is flipped on its head. The camera sees what your kumpare didn’t. The system penalizes what the traffic enforcer used to let slide. And the drivers protest. “Ok lang ang singit-singit para maka-uwi agad!” they cry. But the NCAP won’t let them. It does not flinch, it does not look away, it does not accept palusot.

CHALLENGING THE NARRATIVE

What the NCAP challenges is not just bad driving—it challenges the very narrative. It says no to the idea that personal convenience should always trump collective order. It says no to the myth that we get ahead by getting around the rules.

Of course, many people don’t like it. Because in the short run, the law inconveniences them. Their commute is longer. Their singit is punished. Their individual gain is delayed.

But what they don’t see —yet— is the long game. That if everyone obeyed the rules, we’d all get home earlier. No gridlocks, no collisions, no arguments in the middle of the road.

The NCAP imagines a world where lahat ay sumunod, not out of fear, but out of shared understanding that the common good outweighs the selfish shortcut.

BEHAVIOR IS LEARNED

And so we must reeducate. Rewire the thinking. Reboot the system. Teach that following traffic rules is not a loss but a gain, not a punishment but a promise. That kung isusuko natin ang pansariling ginhawa, mas malaki ang balik na biyaya sa lahat. That discipline, when shared, is freedom.

Of course, the kamote driver will object. And social media amplifies their rants. The NCAP is anti-poor, they say. It’s poorly implemented. There are no signs, the roads are broken, the potholes are deeper than policy.

These are valid points — and yes, government must fix them. But using them as an excuse to disregard the law? That’s textbook kamote. That’s disregard for rules, for safety, for decency.

CHANGE TO CULTURE

Social Learning Theory in Criminology tells us this: behavior is learned. So are the scripts we use to justify it. If we let the illegal justifications dominate—if we let the singit logic win—then expect more people to swerve away from the law. But if we institutionalize the legal scripts, if we normalize the discipline, then we raise a new generation who sees following the law not as an inconvenience, but as identity.

The NCAP must stay. It must stand its ground. Because change, real change, is always resisted at first. But once people see the peace in the order, the safety in the structure, the decency in the discipline—they will adapt. And they will pass it on.

In time, the NCAP will not just be policy. It will be practice. It will be culture.

And who knows? One day, we might even learn how to drive like a nation.

(Editor’s Note: Dr. Raymund E. Narag is an associate professor at the Criminology and Criminal Justice Department at the Southern Illinois University. He had his undergraduate courses at the University of the Philippines in Diliman, Quezon City.)