More precisely, it's when the consequences of one act outweigh the consequences of not doing it. It's a gamble that many bus drivers make... but you can play Russian Roulette for only so long before your luck runs out. As it did for one unfortunate driver last Tuesday as he lost control of his bus in the rain, flew off the Skyway and fell four stories to the ground below.
Much has been said about the "boundary system", which requires the drivers to do more trips than humanly possible simply to break even on a day's worth of work.
While there's nothing inherently immoral with a quota system for service jobs... the level of the boundary is of much debate. Simply: the number of trips a driver can make is constrained by traffic. Hence, drivers try to make up for lost time by driving faster once out of traffic.
Drivers are always aware of the consequences of not making their boundary. It weighs on their every thought as they go home bone-weary and hungry, and as they wake up in the morning, even hungrier. But do they ever think of the consequences of their actions on the road?
I firmly believe that these drivers' inability to properly weigh the pros and cons of their actions stems from a lack of proper driver's education and training. Doing 130 km/h (the bus's estimated speed) on a crowded freeway in a bus is reckless. Doing the same in the rain is insane.
But drivers never really think about it. They think of it as allowing them to do just one more trip on the day, to earn more money.
How much time do you save? Over the 10 kilometer length of the Skyway, overspeeding by 50 km/h nets you a three minute saving. That's six minutes per round trip. Given the traffic and terminal time, and that a driver might be able to do only four or five round trips in an entire day working double-shifts (depending on the length of the route, if it's Manila to Batangas, make it three to four), that's a total of half-an-hour saved. Not even enough to complete half a trip. To make one extra trip a day, drivers have to maintain at least 140-160 km/h on both the regular highway and the Skyway. And some actually do.
All to earn a little more money. And since there are no consequences for overspeeding except a small fine and a confiscated license, drivers have little reason not to try and hit that golden turn-around time.
It's obvious that bigger disincentives than confiscated licenses are required. How about impounding? A driver breaks the limit by over 40 km/h, the entire fleet gets grounded for a day and the bus in question gets impounded for a week, and the driver's license gets revoked for a month. The driver loses out, but the operator loses out even worse. This then creates consequences for the operator, which forces them to review their policies and boundaries. Because if the only incentive for companies to change policy is the one-in-a-thousand accident rather than the one-in-ten overspeeding incident, then there will still be a thousand overspeeding, swerving and racing buses plying the roads for every bus taken off of it.
