Problem with Increasing Automobiles - Essay Example

Cars may become a must in the context when traveling by bus becomes more expensive or inconvenient. But one can never forget the problems caused by cars such as air pollution, sound pollution, and accidents.

Undoubtedly, privately-owned cars are the major reason for traffic blocks in large cities. Moreover, accidents take the lives of many each day. To address these problems, governments and concerned authorities have to adopt amenable measures. Encouraging people to travel by public transport rather than driving their own would release the pressure of the roads and the environment to a great extent. However, in order to encourage people to use public transport, the government must seek to reduce the ticket price first.

Apart from small private cars, the real threat comes from sports utility vehicles. The main problem caused by excessive use of sports utility vehicles is that they consume a large chunk of petrol. If the government imposes restrictions on the import of such sports utility vehicles, it would reduce the level of oil consumption and thereby the traffic block and accidents to a great extent.

In most countries, the absence of effective town planning makes traffic problems. To illustrate, as a result of the poor town planning, roads, bridges, and streets get congested with a huge number of automobiles. It not only takes the lives but also the valuable time of thousands of people every day. Moreover, inadequate parking grounds also cause further traffic problems. According to Marzotto, Burnor and Bonham (2000), the primary answer to this problem is to construct townships and roads after proper planning; in addition, bringing in a new variety of cars must be discouraged and prime consideration must be given to improving the infrastructure (pp. 58- 59).

Another best way to reduce the number of luxurious cars is to levy higher amounts of tax. When tax slabs are lifted people cannot afford to buy them and they will be forced to resort to public transport means. This will be more or less true in the case of the middle-class people who constitute the majority of the population in most countries. Increasing the price of parking tickets, raising tolls, increasing the expense of buying automobiles are also normally proposed by many to address this problem. The safety measures include “concrete barriers, additional lanes, better signal controls, intelligent vehicle highway systems (IVHS), radio tags and traffic sensors, and traffic signals at onramps” (Marzotto, Burnor and Bonham, 2000, p. 60).