The average American will spend about two years of his/her life waiting in line. Collectively, Americans spend nearly 37 billion hours in lines annually. These statistics may seem alarming and depressing. After all, none of us like waiting. We loathe traffic jams, get antsy when our waiter or waitress takes too long to bring our food, and especially detest hearing that elevator music over the phone when we’re put on hold.
But there are reasons we have to wait in line, and these reasons reveal that a little patience is the better alternative to a free-for-all. If it weren’t for crowd control management systems none of us would even be able to access the activities and venues we love. Here are the main three reasons why crowd control management is a necessity for our society.
1) Efficiency.
Consider the inefficiency of a movie theater without stanchion posts. No one would know whose turn it was to purchase a ticket, resulting in a sluggish mass of bodies crowding the poor employees behind the glass. By the time everyone got their ticket, the movie might already be half over.
Crowd control management works similarly to the way a dam works by funneling a flood of people through even flowing lines. While this method means individuals are forced to move slower than they would want to, it also distributes the flow of people fairly evenly, meaning each person moves at a similar pace and gets to their desired location at a reasonable time.
2) Safety.
Imagine a theme park without some sort of barrier system in place. It would be sheer chaos as every family shoved and punched their way through other families to get first dibs on a ride. There would also be the likelihood of people entering a ride or attraction before it’s safe to get on.
Perhaps the most important application of crowd control equipment is crowd safety. Barriers that create lines ensure that people aren’t stepping over or shoving past one another. In addition, these crowd control barriers allow security guards to easily spot potential problems and abusers of the system.
For instance, in a mass of people, it would be hard to spot a violent individual, since the whole crowd would be in motion. In a line, however, one jerk shoving his or her way to the front is easy to spot and even easier to stop. Or, if a kid is trying to jump his way over a barrier to access a ride before it’s safe, someone can easily prevent the eager individual from getting injured or worse.
3) Business.
Any good business cares about the efficiency of its operations and the safety of its employees and customers. This is why crowd control management is so important and beneficial for businesses, especially those that draw in large amounts of people at once.
Large concerts and sporting events potentially draw hundreds of thousands of people. The concert tour business has been expanding in recent years, grossing $2.1 billion last year. The very existence of this industry depends on efficient crowd control management systems. Retractable rope barriers and safety barrier systems are used both outside the venue and within the venue to keep people safe and to keep business flowing as smoothly as possible.
None of us enjoy waiting. It’s in our nature to want everything immediately. But we live in a large society with many others who share our desires. Therefore, crowd control management systems and equipment are our friends, not our enemies, since they allow us to go where we want and do what we want without having to worry about our safety.
