Normas de transporte en vancouver

Oscar Gonzalez Flores  704023

Sociology 110

February 19th 2016

“Norms and Values”

      In todays society, there´s a same understanding of what is a more, a value or folkway because of the culture and the people, depending of what country we are talking about. People assimilates norms with the consequences they´re going to get if they violate them, and that´s what keeps them away from doing it. Still, there are times when people are aware of the rules and their respective punishment for violating them, but they still break them.

      For going further, we need to define what are norms. It tells us what behavior is acceptable or non-acceptable. Norms and values helps people giving an idea of what society expects them to do in an specific situation. The importance of this norms are essential because it gives people a limit in their actions and a standard for behaving. An example of this and as my own experience are all the transit rules for cars, bus, motorcycle, bicycle drivers that help preventing accidents. All this transit rules in Canadian society are very strict and If they are broke, the consequences can be very severe. There´s a reason why all this rules are made for, like with buses, they can only pick you up in a specific area in a specific time. This makes things easier for all the people that uses public transport, by giving them the chance to arrange their time and helping the other drivers by keeping the street free, avoiding traffic that may affect other people. There´s a order that has to be maintain to keep the the city in movement and order. Not all the people are in the same situation, there are people with disabilities that have preference in public transport.

A few months back I fracture my knee and I was unable to put weight on it and I had to come to school every day by public transport. Every time I went into a bus or a train, there was people offering their seats to me. Even when I was coming back home from school, when people saw me struggling going up the hill in my way to home, they offered me a ride. People understand how hard can it be to not be able to use a part of your body.  If you don´t give the seat to a senior or a disabled person this would be just a simple folkway. For instance, there´s a “code” where the skytrain entrance is always open, this means everyone can get in the trains without paying (this is not the right way to do it), but still, people pays the respective fees. As always, there are people that don´t follow this rules, but this is just a minority of people. In summary, norms and values in a society are very important to keep an ethic balance in a society, starting form a good behavior between citizens to a single action such as giving a seat to a disable person.

...