Committed to Road Safety

Safety awareness

Safety is a core competency and a core value for Mercedes-Benz and its automotive brands. Mercedes-Benz, in particular, is renowned worldwide for developing highly sophisticated safety systems. Therefore all our business units stress safety as a priority for the user as well as for the environment they are operating in.

It is believed that over 70 per cent of the fatalities can be reduced in the next ten years through education and enforcement of safety rules and by creating awareness.

Pravin Shah,
President & Chief Executive, (Automotive), M&M Ltd.

At Mahindra safety is an integral part of our philosophy as well as our product development process. Over the years, we have built safety engineering competence, state of the art in-house infrastructure and affordable safety in all mobility domains that we operates in. We consistently value every road user’s life and our commitment to safety is deep rooted in line with our characteristic rugged DNA as we take efforts to contribute to the evolving safety ecosystem.

While the government is working on amending road transport laws to ensure higher road safety standards, OEMs have been working to ensure its implementation. As responsible corporate citizens, we at Mahindra are committed to making India’s roads safer and for that we have taken a holistic approach towards safety. We have successfully rolled out several educational programs, road safety initiatives and have gone a step further to ensure health and wellness for drivers and traffic personnel.

Today, most accidents are caused due to driver negligence and improper road etiquette. It is our responsibility to educate people about road safety.

Through activities at various touch points, we are trying to educate the drivers. Under programs such as Mahindra Saarthi Abhiyan, we provide scholarships to Girl Child of truck drivers, while during National Road Safety Week Celebration, we initiate mega awareness drive along with SIAM. The Rise for Safe Roads is in partnership with Save Life Foundation and we are working with MSRDC in four areas namely Education, Enforcement, Engineering & Emergency Care to make the Mumbai Pune Expressway a Zero Fatality Corridor. Further through Street Smart we have undertaken various road infrastructure improvements such as signage posts and development of traffic islands. The idea is to educate people about road safety, helping the drivers of today and tomorrow to imbibe the values of roadsafety from a young age.

In fact road safety is expected to improve dramatically when every component of the system including the vehicle, road infrastructure, traffic engineering, driver training and road etiquette, enforcement, education and awareness, as well as the laws that govern the road system, have safety embedded into them as an inherent virtue. Under the Zero Fatality Corridor Project, we have spent around Rs.5Cr and every year we spend approximately 15 – 20% of our CSR budgets on various projects under Road Safety.

Road Safety Index

Maruti Suzuki India Limited, India’s leading passenger vehicle maker, recently released the Road Safety Index, a weighted average of scores on important parameters relating to road safety. The index, compiled on the basis of citizen views and ground-level surveys, rates eight Indian cities on road safety. The cities covered include Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Mumbai and Pune.

The report is a part of India Road Safety Mission (IRSM), the objective of the report is to lay down parameters which can become guidelines for Government institutions, NGOs and Corporates to improve road safety in the cities covered in the study.