Social impact of bad roads

Roadways is known to be the most reliable modes of transport; facilitating easy and fast movement of traffic with door to door services, also having comparatively lesser construction costs than railways.
Did you know that India has one of the largest road networks in the world aggregating to about 2.3 million km at present?
But as we break through reality we all know that not all roads are as smooth as they sound. Certain roads exist which contain potholes, cracks, or uneven surfaces that are unsafe to drive on; such roads are termed as 'Bad Roads' 
Most of the good and safe roads in India or anywhere else in the world, are turned into bad roads because of being left under construction or due to natural calamities like floods, landslides or even because of simple causes like heavy rains and accidents.

​Image courtesy ' Roadbounce - Mobile Technology to identify Road Condition and Traffic Safety Indicators.'
The picture shown above is an image of a National Highway passing through Solapur, India. 
You can see that even though it is a National Highway, it's condition proves to be a major danger and obstacle for people to drive past. Even though we may ignore such roads and drive past them, we need to acknowledge the fact that they are very hazardous for all human beings. Everyday we read the paper,  and we see that there are at least two to three articles about accidents caused due to the extreme conditions of roads.

Here are a few vital effects of untreated roads on our lives-

• ​ Deterioration of Human Resources -

One of the most common social impact that we are all aware of is loss of human resources. Accidents can lead to a vast number of fatalities and injuries to the travelers. 
This is all very old and basic news. 
Recent studies, show that due to the garbage and waste disposed near under construction and unused roads mixed with the air and rains in monsoon seasons is deteriorating the health of the people living in the nearby housing societies.
Precious human resources are essential for the development of a nation and we need to be careful in conserving such resources.

• Loss of finance- 
  

Huge sums of money is used to build automobiles for transport. Accidents taking place on bad roads can lead to loss of money in the repair of such accident hit vehicles  and roads. Commodities of transport like cars and bikes are not affordable for everybody. Therefore, for a person  earning just enough to sustain his families' basic needs, it would be very difficult for him to buy a  vehicle  again immediately. Even for the government, it is not an affordable business to fix such  accident  prone roads.

•  ​End of home ownership- 

Even though as surprising as it sounds, accidents can lead one to poverty. 
Let us take an example to elaborate this statement.
Suppose a person belonging to a rural household has an accident and  he is not fortunate enough to have an insurance; unlike a person from an urban background. 
We see that this victim will have to fall back on his asset(s) owned. And we know the effects can be even more dramatic for the poor in developing countries.
As we can see, traffic crashes can bring about a lot of difficulties on individual households, both in developed and developing countries.

• Job insecurity-

According to a recent survey after the injured people in accidents finally leave a hospital, the length of time for job searching for disabled and non-disabled people is 38 months and 19.8 months respectively which is comparatively less given at what rate the country is expanding. 

Some of the basic precautions that we can take to avoid all these problems to ensure a safer and better future are-

•  Always buckle your seatbelt-

This might be the most often heard precaution but it is in fact the most important one.
Even though latest cars contain air bags, you need to be prepared first as we all know safety first!

• Follow the signs- 

Every single day we see that people are casually driving on the wrong side, cars are parked under 'no parking' signs and also vehicles parked on footpaths! Driving on the wrong side is breaking a law and on top of this going fast and honking on other cars should not be tolerated at all.

• Don't pollute roads-

As convenient as it may be to throw a chocolate wrapper on the ground it is 10 times more tiresome to pick it up and throw it in the dustbins. Due to litter on major roads most of the drivers go around these heaps of garbage; and once people start realizing that the garbage is not being moved, the roads turn into garbage dumps.

• Make the city in-charge or local newspaper aware of such roads-

So many of today's newspapers have environment pages, dealing with the current problems. Newspapers like Times of India also feature bad roads and problems being faced on these roads in various regions to make the people aware of them.
Writing to the authorities responsible can be a helpful step in reducing the effects of bad roads.

• Don't just sit idle! Pressurize the authorities to take immediate action-

Most of the times, many of the authorities are not aware of such damaged roads, and even if they are, they do not take quick action against its betterment.

Thus, consistent writing by a large number of people can prove to be fruitful for road transport. Petitions, awareness marches, emails and newspaper or website articles can be considered extremely important for pressurizing the government to fix such roads.
Now we all can understand that is why it is relevant and desirable to understand the social impacts, the causes, and the effects of road crashes in developing countries. And it is equally important to ensure an improvement in road safety around the world as a way of mitigating its negative effects on poverty reduction and economic growth.  
To a better and safer world where road transport is immensely used and looked after, Ciao!