James Deakin

So I just posted the story of a balikbayan who rented a car while on holiday here. He was driving his own family around in a rental Innova when he was apprehended for a traffic violation and then charged with operating a colorum vehicle because the unit had no proper franchise. He was slapped with a 200k fine, the first-offense rate for a van-class unit, which the rental company then deducted from his credit card. Since then, I’ve been flooded with messages from small operators. Not defending the charge to the customer (they all agree that’s not the renter’s responsibility) but all raising the same issue: the rules around self-drive rentals make no sense. LTFRB Memorandum Circular 2011-008 exempted private vehicles rented for a fee if they were under a long-term lease or used and driven exclusively by the renter or their representative. In October 2024, MC 2024-038 repealed 2011-008 and 2019-003. Since then, LTFRB and LTO have said that cars rented or leased for a fee need a franchise or authority to operate. Enforcers are now citing 2024-038 against rental units, while some rental companies still tell customers pure self-drive needs no CPC. What nobody has published is a clean rule separating a self-drive rental from a chauffeur-driven one. That gap is the problem. Here’s the account of a small car rental owner in the province who asked to stay anonymous. He runs a self-drive business. The customer drives. There’s no driver and no passenger for hire. He wants to pay his taxes, follow the rules, and do everything by the book. A franchise costs serious money for every unit. Like most small operators, his cars are bank financed. The bank will not consent to reclassifying a financed unit as for-hire until the loan is paid. LTFRB dropped its bank Certificate of Conformity requirement in 2023, but the bank’s consent and the LTO annotation still hold things up. So the unit never becomes a legal for-hire unit, and he’s stuck paying the loan, the franchise costs and the idle car. Then there’s his Toyota Wigo. He went through the DOT and DOTr processes and paid substantial fees upfront. Only afterward did he learn the unit was never eligible. Nobody told him at the start. Meanwhile the amortization, insurance, registration and maintenance keep running on cars he can’t legally put to work. He isn’t asking for an exemption. He’s asking for four things: 1A clear, written answer on what self-drive rentals actually require 2Eligibility rules published before fees are paid 3A way for financed vehicles to comply 4One agency that speaks for all of them A self-driven rental should not be classified as a common carrier. The renter isn’t being transported for a fee. They’re using a vehicle they paid to use. There is no rational reason a rental car driven by a tourist should fall under the same classification as a TNVS, a taxi or a UV Express. It protects nobody and hurts plenty of people. Rules that contradict each other. Fees collected for units that were never eligible. Operators who can’t get a straight answer from one office to the next. This isn’t enforcement. It’s a trap, and the people falling into it are the ones trying to follow the law. The customer should never be caught in between. A renter has no way of knowing whether the car handed to him carries the right authority. A company that puts a unit on the road without proper authority does not get to send the bill to the one person who had no say in any of it. The US card issuer wouldn’t reverse the charge because a foreign bank has no way to make sense of a Philippine administrative offense, especially something as vague as colorum. So to my friends at the LTFRB, LTO, DOTr and DOT, I ask for one thing. Issue a written clarification of MC 2024-038. Does a vehicle rented without a driver, with no per-head fare, still need a CPC? If so, under which category? Small operators are trying to follow the rules. Help them do it. Fix the rules. Fix the process. Keep the customer out of it

Every balikbayan gets the same warning: overcharging taxis, tiring public transport, a commute that can wreck a trip. So when one Balikbayan from Texas decided to rent a car instead, he thought he had found the perfect hack. He paid ₱29,000 for an Innova and drove his family to Isabela. On the way home he was stopped for a minor traffic violation, which he paid. What followed cost him ten days, a rebooked flight, and a ₱200,000 charge on his credit card. A warning to anyone who rents a car in the Philippines. During the stop, officers asked for his license and registration, then, once they learned it was a rental, a Certificate of Public Convenience. He was on holiday, driving his family home, and had no idea what that was. The Innova had no CPC, so on top of the traffic charge he was named in a colorum case, and the plate was confiscated. He says the owner couldn’t produce the franchise documents the LTO asked for. He returned the van without its plate, rebooked his flight, and made several trips to the LTO himself. The owner blamed him for not being “wise enough” to deal with the system. On the third day after he returned the van, the company charged ₱200,000 to his card. He disputed it with Chase. The company called it a “personal violation” attributable to him. Chase wouldn’t reverse it. The bank had never heard of colorum. It treated the charge as a merchant penalty on an authorized card, not a fine it could see. Months later the LTO issued a Final Adjudication: the colorum violation and penalty were the operator’s, not the renter’s. He was removed as a respondent. When he showed it to the owner, the explanation changed. The ₱200,000 was now “lost revenue” for downtime. The contract covers damages and delays he caused. It does not price a missing franchise as a customer charge. He sent me his documents. I verified them, then called the owner. His argument: self-drive rentals don’t need a CPC, the dropped charge proves the car was never in violation, and he is out of pocket for the months the van was off the road. So I checked with the LTO and LTFRB. He’s half right. The other half is the expensive part. Until October 2024, Memorandum Circulars 2011-008 and 2019-003 exempted certain rentals from a franchise. Some operators still quote that rule. It is gone. Memorandum Circular 2024-038, issued October 8, 2024 and effective October 10, repealed both exemptions. All rental services, and private vehicles rented out for a fee, must now secure a franchise. This rental was January 2026, after the repeal. Self-drive doesn’t cure it. Neither does private registration. I agree in principle that a self-drive rental shouldn’t need a CPC. But the law is the law, and a disagreement with it is a petition, not a card charge. The plate was taken over the company’s missing franchise, not the checkpoint. Dropping the renter doesn’t make the van legal. It means the case was never his. Any fight with the rules belongs with the LTO and LTFRB, filed by the owner, not passed to a customer. The relabeling fails too. Under Joint Administrative Order 2014-01, ₱200,000 is the first-offense colorum fine for a van. That is the number they took. Lost income has to be proven and traced to the renter’s breach. His breach was a minor traffic violation, and that fine was paid. The months off the road came from the seizure, which traces back to the owner. I told the owner his fight with the regulators belongs in a separate case. It shouldn’t involve his customers. He stands firm that the downtime is the renter’s responsibility. As of this writing, the case is still pending and the customer is still not reimbursed. The owner told me he is grateful for the call and welcomed the interview so we can finally “open the Pandora’s box.” So now that it’s open, I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

This happened on CLLEX.

Good evening, Sir James. I've been watching your videos about unfortunate incidents, never thinking the same would happen to me. I'm seeking help regarding what happened to me Friday night and how the authorities handled it. Unfortunately, the full details of the person who hit me weren't properly taken, including the business name and the owner, who also claimed to be a lawyer. He hit me twice as he tried to escape. The second time, he didn't stop, and I almost ended up underneath his vehicle; I only survived because I jumped out of the way. He never got out of his L300, even though he knew from the start he had hit me. I caught up with him the first time because traffic on E. Rodriguez Jr. Ave. was heavy, but even when he was stopped, he had no intention of talking. He tried even harder to flee when I said I'd call the MMDA or an enforcer. We chased each other from E. Rodriguez/Eastwood to Marikina and back to Marcos Highway, until local police/barangay authorities finally stopped him. I'm asking for help because he wasn't held in traffic custody and no further investigation was done. They only documented everything at the traffic police station, even though we said this could be treated as attempted homicide and not just a simple traffic violation. We're also afraid that since he was allowed to leave the station, he may already be out of Manila. Please watch the video and let me know your thoughts, sir. Thank you.

Vios driver claims she was not in reverse. Good thing there was a dashcam behind her.

Who is at fault here? The dashcam car or the pick up?

On October 5, NCAP comes back to Metro Manila. Not as one system. Six cities so far: Manila, Quezon City, Valenzuela, Parañaque, Muntinlupa, and San Juan, each with its own scheme on top of MMDA. Only the fine was unified. The notice, the portal, and the appeal were not. This is not an LTO program, and it is not one MMDA system. It is six city ordinances stacked on the MMDA scheme that has run on major roads since May 2025. The Traffic Code was supposed to be one system. Only the fine was standardized. Notice, payment, appeal, and portal were not. To know if you are clear, you check your mailbox for a city letter, or each city’s portal once they publish one. MMDA at least built a push: a sender ID, an email, and one portal. These six have announced nothing like it. A notice goes to the address on the registration. Then it is on you to find the right portal and pay each city separately. Online payment and protest are promised. A full list of portals is not out yet. On the road that is a delayed minefield. A family driver or a fleet can rack up violations no one knows about. Nothing texts. You rely on the postal system. Miss the letter and you find out at renewal, when the driver may be gone, the car reassigned, and the plate is on hold. For a fleet, that can run into hundreds of thousands of pesos. I got two MMDA violations last month for a car I sold a year ago. Transfer done, new owner’s CR in hand. The portal said “under maintenance.” I warned the buyer and sent the CR to MMDA. A week later, another violation for the same car, still in my name. The tickets are still on my account. At least MMDA texted me. Not every seller stays in touch. The new owner may not find out until renewal, up to three years for a new car. A March 2024 Supreme Court ruling said Metro Manila cities could not write their own tickets unless MMDA deputized them, and ordered a single ticketing system. The 2023 Traffic Code was supposed to finish that. Monday rebuilds the maze: six camera schemes, six portals, and a warning system for only one of them. The next city means another portal and another contest clock. Seventeen cities would mean eighteen inboxes to check every week. Why can’t this sit under one agency? One portal. One text. One place to pay. One place to contest. Imagine if InstaPay worked like this. You send the money. Nothing confirms it arrived. The bank mails a letter to an address you left years ago. You check each bank’s site one by one. Miss it, and your card is blocked at renewal. When government tells Globe and Smart, or Autosweep and Easytrip, to connect, they find a way. With its own agencies, it hands the public the pieces and asks us to return the puzzle whole. The Court already called MMDA the central body on Metro Manila traffic. The Traffic Code unified the fines. MMDA built the text and the portal. Mag group chat naman kayo. I am not against enforcement. I have always supported NCAP. One agency, one portal, one system. Is that really too much to ask?

We should really have a kamote of the day award. All finalists get a show cause order. Grand prize is lifetime revocation of license. Where would you rank this one?

Episode 2 of The Past Lane is finally up. It’s been a bit of a break since the first one, but some things are worth their wait in old. Yes, that pun was intentional. This time we’re featuring one of the most iconic SUVs ever built, an absolute cult classic: the legendary Gen one 3-door Pajero SWB. The owner always dreamed of a Defender, but could never quite justify the price. So he settled for what he thought was a compromise, and it turned out to be the real prize all along. And the best part is that someone else gets the chance to keep the legend alive, because this gem is actually up for sale. Marketplace link in the comments. Welcome to The Past Lane, brought to you by Mobil 1. Because every mile matters.

One of the many reasons you should never tailgate

The MMDA needs to act immediately and without fear or favor, or it will lose the trust and credibility it needs to enforce the law. There is nothing personal about this. This is a simple case of applying the law equally and setting an example.

So the peso just hit another record low. And according to the BSP Governor, it’s because mayabang tayo. We don’t save enough, daw. He said more than that, but that was the line that travelled. Given the choice between being mayabang or tanga, I’ll take the former. Who the hell wants to save in pesos? It’s like investing in an unrefrigerated ice storage facility. Since January 2021 a dollar has gone from about ₱48 to ₱62.50. Thirty percent more pesos for the same greenback. A basket that cost ₱100 then costs about ₱125 now. The peso did not just get weaker against the dollar. It got weaker against lunch. I woke up to this five years ago, during the pandemic, when I first learned about Bitcoin. I got grief for it. Ponzi. Based on nothing. Magic internet money. One of my own banks blocked me from buying it. For my own safety, they said. Buying through a BSP-registered platform is perfectly legal. Same money. Same discipline. No heroics. ₱1,000 a week from January 2021 to today, September 3, 2026. 296 weeks. ₱296,000. Jar: ₱296,000. The jar does not lie. It does not help. Walk-in branch savings, 0.25%, BIR already taking 20% of the interest: about ₱297,700. A ₱1,700 prize for being good. Barely dinner. A lot of counters now pay 0.0625%. That version barely clears the jar. Best-case peso: a 4% time deposit or a digital bank that actually pays. After BIR, about ₱325,000. A 5% TD gets you around ₱332,000. Grant the whole thing. You made about ₱29,000 after tax. Prices rose about 25% from the start of this clock. The interest did not cover the hole. Same weekly peso into dollars, left in a drawer, no interest: about ₱334,000. The drawer still beat the best-case peso account. Same ₱1,000 a week into bitcoin. Every week. No matter the price that day. 2021 average around $47,500. You bought a little. 2022 crashed to $16,000. You bought a lot more in the hole. 2023 and 2024 climbed. You kept buying. 2025 hit about $126,000 last October, so you bought the least, because it cost the most. 2026 pulled back through the high $70,000s and lower. You kept going. Through 2022 the stack was underwater for a long time. Most people stopped. This math only belongs to the ones who didn’t. That weekly ₱1,000 bought about 0.12 bitcoin at an average of roughly $45,000. At about $77,500 today, a bit under $9,300. In pesos, a bit under ₱600,000. Hold it and BIR hasn’t touched it. Sell it and the gain is ordinary income, not the 20% final tax the bank already skimmed. Same ₱1,000 a week. Same five years and eight months. Jar: ₱296,000. Branch: ₱297,700. 4% peso account, tax paid: ₱325,000. Dollars in a drawer: ₱334,000. Bitcoin, through the crash, the grind, the high, and the pullback: a bit under ₱600,000. People still call it a scam. The media and the traditional finance outfits report every crash. Yes, it crashes. Hard. It also shoots back up. Harder. Zoom out. The person who kept buying still walks away with about double what the best-behaved peso saver has for doing nothing particularly clever. Or worse, mayabang.

The Legendaddy of the week

This is why we have trust issues with new projects. It’s never the project. It’s the people behind it. Whether it’s flood control, a subway, a data center, it doesn’t matter. The infrastructure isn’t the debate. Trust is. And we’ve lost it. Some will already be lobbying for bigger budgets, pointing out that developed countries like China flooded this season too. Sure, they did. But did they plunder their flood control funds first? That’s the difference. Nobody’s saying rain can’t overwhelm even the best systems. That’s not in question. What’s in question is that we paid for systems that never came, or were bled dry along the way. So no. You don’t get to run the comparison game. “It can happen to the best systems” only applies if you actually built one. If every peso went where it was supposed to go and it still failed, fine. We’d take that on the chin; we always have. We’re the most resilient people on earth, and we are proud of that; we’re just sick of that being monetized by the same people who stole the budget for it. So stop blaming the rain. If you think it’s bad when Mother Nature unleashed her fury, wait till the Filipino people unleash theirs.

If the expressways really want everyone on RFID to ease traffic, why not remove the bottleneck of a registration process that is limited to working hours and weather restrictions? Why can't we just get one at a convenience store or online? Or, if they're worried about fakes, make it available at the toll booth itself on request. Just a simple prepaid account you can reload, with a sticker to open the barrier. If the sticker is already given out for free, what's the real obstacle? They'll say security. That the tag has to be tied to the vehicle, so they need the OR/CR, sales invoice or deed of sale, valid ID, and the car physically present to "KYC" it properly. Ok. I see how that benefits them. But why is it a requirement for us? If the car is already registered with the LTO, that's the highest form of vehicle KYC the state requires. Everything after that is an extra layer the toll operators chose to add. And if it's really that dangerous to have unregistered toll road users out there, explain cash. You drive up, pay, the barrier lifts. No identity check, no ownership documents, no installation appointment. And correct me if I’m wrong, but I’ve never heard of someone dying or getting injured as a result of not providing their data to the toll booth attendant. When I asked this question before, I was told the account has to be tied to the car because they need an identity to chase negative balances. Really? Cause if that’s the problem that needs to be solved, try this simple fix: don't lift the barrier if the load isn't enough. We already do that with cash. It works brilliantly. Technology can do the same with RFID. Choosing to allow negative balances, then using that as the excuse for the paperwork, is circular. Then they'll say class determination requires it. It doesn't. They already use height and axle sensors at the plaza. I've been charged Class 2 for having mountain bikes on the roof rack, even though the vehicle is registered as Class 1. The sensors decide in real time. The sticker doesn't need to carry a permanent class locked behind ownership papers. I can appreciate the value of registering each vehicle for fleets or companies claiming it back as an expense, but then shouldn’t it be optional? For as long as it is legal to pay cash for something and not have to register, then the same should apply to e payments of the same service or product. There's already enough friction in every layer of everything we do these days. The goal should be finding ways to reduce steps, not adding ones that work against that goal, because it's really starting to take its toll on people.

Fair?

Anyone else tired of the endless government gaslighting? It doesn’t matter how obvious something is, we are always told that there’s a complicated component that you and I can never understand. That’s why you need them. Take the most obvious ones. We’re told that electricity is expensive because of systems loss and that shouldn’t be passed on to the customer. But they tax us 12% on that thing they say shouldn’t be there and that we never got. Imagine being robbed by someone, so you go to the police and on top of your loss, you have to pay a 12% tax on what they stole. That’s where we are now. Then there’s the price of gas. When it goes up they say it’s because of MOPS, but when it takes longer to come down, all of a sudden there are a lot of moving parts to consider. It’s not that simple, they say. It’s complicated, they say. But conveniently, it’s always only on one side. And when we let them get away those things, they get bolder and bolder. Today we have lawmakers hiding in the open, evading warrants of arrest, making a mockery of the justice system they are sworn to serve, openly refusing to face trial for their own crimes, but hey, we’re told not to jump to conclusions, its not how it looks, it’s a lot more complicated than that. It’s not. Because when you or I break the law, or are even accused of it, we have to stand trial and go through the process. No ifs, no buts. But when one of our lawmakers do it, they simply call it something else and drown you in semantics and legalese. Every single time, for every single thing. Take gaming ads. Every time the pressure builds, they tighten the rules just enough to look like they did something, billboards down, ads pulled. And every time, it comes back wearing a different costume. Oh, but it’s not the same thing, Tito James. This time it’s a PSA for responsible gaming. Educate yourself. Same celebrities, same casino branding, same call to action to follow the page for a chance to win an iPhone or whatever TF. The label changed. The business model didn’t. And they call it reform. Then there’s the city of Bacoor, still confiscating licenses months after the DOTr suspended the practice nationwide. When the LTO called them out, the city’s answer was that the Supreme Court ruling only applies to Metro Manila LGUs, so they get to keep doing what they want. Never mind DILG, who they are directly under. Never mind the DOJ, DOTr, the LTO etc, all of which are national government agencies. They don’t even bother to come up with a legal argument. They just say, basta may ordinance tayo. And like magic, 48 hours of outrage and ranting later, we move on. But at a cost. Because while our attention is being hacked, so is the credibility of our entire nation. These all add up. Yes, netizens will move on to the next shiny thing, whether it’s another scandal or a much needed win in sports. But good news or bad news, the result is the same. We’re being professionally distracted. Because once you strip away all the noise, the bottom line is and has always been, rules only bite when you’re small. Break them big enough, publicly enough, and you don’t get a penalty. You get a rebrand, a press statement, or a courtroom debate over what every grade schooler can already tell you is wrong. That’s not law. That’s leverage, and it only ever points down. You cannot build a culture of compliance on a foundation of selective enforcement. Every time an institution lets a blatant violation slide, or just lets the violator rename it, it sets a precedent. One that calcifies into jurisprudence that the average Joe is just supposed to accept. I’m tired of being told it’s complicated. It’s not complicated. It’s just inconvenient for the people who’d have to enforce it. And that’s the real trick. Keep everyone arguing about the last scandal so nobody notices the one happening right in front of you in real time. It’s time to wake up, Philippines.

Not everyone will get it, and that’s ok.