Ticket

P500 for making a U-turn in a supposedly no U-turn area. Sucks.

I actually didn't know you couldn't make a U-turn where I did. I was along the Ortigas side of Shaw trying to go to Makati and my initial plan was to turn left once I got to Edsa. Unfortunately, I ended up on the wrong side of the road and couldn't go under the Shaw flyover anymore, so I had to go over it. I decided I could just make a U-turn once I crossed the flyover. I didn't see any No U-turn signs so I U-turned. And a few meters after I did, traffic enforcers blocked my path and told me to move to the side of the road.

Apparently, Shaw is a National road and you are not allowed to make a U-turn when you are on it, at least on the Mandaluyong side. The traffic enforcer pointed to the solid line in the middle of the road that indicated you couldn't turn there. He actually also said you couldn't make a left turn, but I was thinking, there are buildings on the left side of the road, so how are you supposed to get there if you couldn't cross the solid line?

Anyways, since I'm probably one of the scant few people in Manila who don't really want to give traffic enforcers any money to look the other way, I just had him write me a ticket. I had to surrender my license which meant I also had to pick it up at the Mandaluyong City Hall. The ticket cost me P500 and the trip to City Hall used up about an hour and a half of my time so it was definitely more economical for me to have just passed the enforcer a P100 bill, but I don't really like encouraging that kind of behavior. So I guess I just need to make sure not to break any traffic rules in the future. (Or well, at least not when traffic enforcers are around LOL.)