Traffic jams happen when the roads are congested with vehicles and they are moving very slowly instead of moving fast. This occurrence can take a negative effect on businesses that falls down to the negative effect on the economy. Almost all of the businesses now-a-days are fitting on the trend of home shopping; this kind of mode in a business requires the businessmen to send their products to the customers, via courier. The courier company then delivers it to the customer through their delivery boy who either rides a motorcycle or takes a delivery van. When the product is delayed because of traffic jam, the customer will possibly be unsatisfied and the company that offered the service will have a bad reputation. This short amount of time that the products or goods have been delayed can cause a major problem to the clients and the entrepreneurs.
Students and employees are also affected by traffic jams and the effect of it on their lives play a major role on their productivity at work or school.
Let’s cite an example:
An employee woke up early one morning because he/she has a presentation in office that will determine his/her promotion. But as he/she drives on the road, he/she notices that the traffic is moving at a snail’s pace and he/she has no other way of going to the office, except by that road. Another person has his/her son/daughter who is having an examination that day. The traffic jam made him/her late and he/she reaches the examination hall late, thus losing marks in that particular paper.
Traffic jams can cause delays in many areas of our life and that delayed time may cause so much inconvenience to people.
I work at Marol Naka in Andheri (East) and the traffic here is very heavy, especially in the evenings after 5.00 p.m. Every evening, after 5.00 p.m., there is a huge traffic jam along the Andheri-Kurla Road and the authorities concerned are turning a blind eye towards it. This has been going on for years — 35 years to be precise. I leave office at 6.00 pm. and by the time I reach my residence at Sion, it is almost 9.30 p.m.
Other negative effects of traffic jams are additional pollution, more fuel expenditure and delay in the delivery of goods.
If a person gets stuck up in a traffic jam for at least an hour everyday and the average productive life of that person is 30 years, then he/she will be wasting an average of about 28,000 hours of his/her life just because of the traffic jam. If we think about it, this is not a good idea to live your life. Money is wasted and almost half of your life will be spent sitting in a vehicle doing nothing, just waiting for the vehicles in front of you to move.
One study suggests that people who sit that long have a shorter life expectancy; so the longer you sit in a vehicle, the shorter your life becomes.
Traffic jams also contributes to pollution because of the gases that the vehicles emit. These pollutants are harmful to the health of the people and to the earth because those kinds of toxic gases cause a major harm to the ozone layer of the earth.
One of the main reasons why there’s more congestion is due to more cars on the road. The adult population is increasing and therefore more people want their own personal transport to get around with. As the number of cars increase, the chance of congestion also increases. That is why in smaller towns and villages congestion is almost unheard of.
The disadvantages of traffic jams are never ending. It can only end if the government provides us with wider roads for the vehicles to move. People can also help diminish traffic jams by not using their vehicles very often and walk their way to their destinations or take a public transport.
(The views expressed by the author in the article are his/her own.)
