Committed to Road Safety

Roland Folger,
MD & CEO, Mercedes-Benz India

India has one of the highest motorisation growth rates in the world which is accompanied by rapid road expansion network and urbanisation. However, India is facing some serious negative impacts on road safety levels.

As per Ministry of Road Transport & Highway, 2015 report, the total number of road accidents increased by 2.5 per cent from 4,89,400 in 2014 to 5,01,423 in 2015. The analysis of road accident data 2015 reveals that about 1,374 accidents and 400 deaths take place every day on Indian roads, which further translates into 57 accidents and loss of 17 lives on an average every hour in our country.

Road safety initiatives

Mercedes-Benz as a company considers safety in vehicles to be of paramount importance. Worldwide, we are renowned for developing highly sophisticated safety systems. In India, we have initiated a road safety programme in 2015 called ‘Safe Roads’ keeping the Indian road scenario in focus. Safe Roads is a joint initiative of Mercedes-Benz headquarters and corporate entities operating in India i.e. Mercedes-Benz India, Daimler India Commercial Vehicles, Mercedes-Benz Research & Development India and Daimler Financial Services India. It is a road-show exhibition educating traffic safety through physical demonstrations, visual aids and research reports. The physical demonstration is undertaken with the use of exhibits that are brought from Germany providing a real life experience of safety measures that can potentially save lives during road accidents.

Mercedes-Benz has also developed state-of-the-art safety features that have proven to be effective. In MBRDI alone, there are over 100 engineers contributing to these technologies in active and passive safety of Mercedes-Benz vehicles with 54 patents filed on automotive safety. While there are some policy and regulatory hurdles that exist in order to apply them in India, we hope that the ‘Safe Roads’ initiative will enhance the road user’s awareness of such technologies and will help persuading the legislators to ease these norms for the greater good of society.

Road safety and reducing the road fatalities is a collective effort; be it the governing body, vehicle manufacturer, or the driver. To ensure road safety, all parties have to understand their responsibility and come together to build a safe transport system. Accidents and resulting fatalities cannot be reduced through innovative technologies alone. It requires responsible driving too.

Roads and infrastructure should be designed keeping in mind futuristic vehicle traffic, mechanisms should be designed so as to encourage adherence to traffic rules, stricter punishment for those who break rules could be followed.

There are multiple factors associated with road accidents. Some of the reasons are over speeding, non-compliance to the traffic rules, not using seat belts and other safety systems on their vehicles. Having said that, ignorance of safety norms and rules remains one of the major reasons for fatalities on the road.