Business and Traffic habits – Part 2

Accidents involving people other than yourself

TB: Whenever there is an accident involving one or more vehicles on the road, you can expect mild to severe disruption in traffic based upon the size of the vehicles involved and the severity of the injuries in the accident. In these accidents, the fault lies with some vehicle owner who created the circumstances for the accident to occur. Either he took a wrong turn, swerved onto the path of an oncoming vehicle, got a flat tyre causing the vehicle to go out of control etc. Whatever maybe the reason, the main focus here is the disruption of traffic leading to hours and hours of lost productivity and frustrated minds. In such cases, people who got caught in the traffic are just simply unfortunate and others who took another road or passed by earlier were luckier. The traffic, that gets created as a result of the accident, needs to cleared by some way or the other. That is where the authorities come in. The traffic policemen try to clear the site of the accident and accordingly direct all the stuck vehicles.

BB: Analogy to a road accident involving others would be similar to what I believe to be the present financial crisis. For no fault of your own, your business got stuck in the mire that the mortgage lenders created. The credit lines dried up taking with it the major source of funds for most of the businesses. Although you contributed nothing to the cause of the crisis, you still got affected by it. Someone somewhere made wrong and rash decisions without thinking of the consequences, and brought all of them down with themselves. All banking majors got involved in the “accident” some way or the other and it brought us all to the present state. After that the government stepped in with its bailout package(TB analogy: Policemen trying to clear the accident) to save the sick companies. The bigger the businesses involved in the “accident”, more severe the effect (TB analogy: Accidents involving trucks take more time to clear than those involving two wheelers). Also various arms of the sick companies or the companies themselves are bought by “healer” companies who can turn around the “sickness” in the companies by whatever means suitable (TB analogy: Injured persons are taken to a hospital where they can be healed and vehicles involved are taken to the garage)

Accidents involving yourself

TB: Road accidents happen all the time. Thousands of people die every year in road accidents. In an accident, you may or may not be at fault but you are involved nonetheless. You are at fault when you, due to carelessness, ram into another vehicle or person. People like speed. “Speed thrills but kills”. “Better late than never”. One often reads these warnings on roads and understands them but never implements. Driving your vehicle with a lot of speed gives you the high as well as makes you reach your destination earlier. Often speed is accompanied by rashness. Many drivers who drive fast, often think that they are in control of the vehicle. They feel that they are at the top of the world and nothing can stop them. That’s when either an accident occurs or a policeman stops them to give them a speeding ticket. Rashness on roads includes speeding, dangerous swerves, car or bike drifting etc. The list is endless but core point is rashness.

When it is not your fault and you get involved in an accident, it is nothing but your unlucky day. There is nothing much you can do to prevent that except, of course, curse the stars. J

BB: Accidents involving yourself compares to the closing down of business. A business closes down when it runs out of money, cannot contain its costs, no longer has a product to manufacture, no longer can afford to give services etc. I will consider the case where the business closes down to due to wrong decisions taken by the higher management. When a business is growing at high speed, the higher management often assumes that they are in control of the situation and whatever decisions they take, there is no one that can stop them from becoming the number one. They are often blinded by success. In such situations, more often than not, the management tends to take some rash decision which ultimately leads to the downfall of the company. The money is growing at such speeds that sometimes the upper echelons of the company strike a venomous deal whose poison slowly seeps through the entire company and brings it down. The lure of the green moolah often drives the company to manipulate accounts, evade taxes, switch to unlawful practices etc. And that’s when the authorities such as Income Tax dept., Sales tax dept., Customs dept., etc come in and pose as obstacles. These are authorities that can ultimately force you to close your business. (TB analogy:  When you are speeding in your car and thereby breaking the law, you are stopped in your tracks by the policemen.)

In case the business party, to which you sell your goods, goes down for some reasons, it can also bring you down. Such would be the case when your major customer goes down and your business cannot be sustained without that customer. (TB analogy: Someone rams his or her vehicle into yours for no fault of your own).