The India Road Safety Mission is a joint initiative of Maruti Suzuki India Ltd. and Times Network that aims to promote safe driving and spread awareness about the importance of professional driving training
Better drivers lead to safer roads! Believing in this saying and eager to make it a reality, five years ago, Maruti Suzuki had embarked on a mission to make Indian roads safer. By launching the iconic India Road Safety (IRSM), the company pledged to look into a very serious issue concerning the entire nation – road safety. Taking up the agenda of imparting correct driving training to prospective drivers, Maruti Suzuki adopted a 2-pronged approach that included spreading awareness about the importance of safe driving and facilitating professional training through its chain of driving schools.
The campaign has till date impacted nearly 2 million people by making them aware about the importance of road safety practices. IRSM 2019, in association with the Maruti Driving School went a step ahead and besides focusing on spreading awareness, worked towards bringing about actionable change. The campaign has succeeded in drawing the attention towards every nuance of driving and reiterating the importance of driver training from a professional driving school.
In order to highlight the importance of professional training, IRSM conducted a master class at the Maruti Driving School. The 21-day training module for learners combined theory with practical to decode the various aspects of driving and foster safe driving skills. For the very first time, state-of-the-art simulators were installed in a driving school to let students learn the art of driving without having to worry about the pressures of driving on a real road.
In the second phase, IRSM conducted an on-road driving test to check the skills of two young drivers – one is a pass-out from the Maruti Driving School and another who has learnt driving from a different medium. The various on-road situation tests served to gauge the drivers and how they fared on the driving score card.
The grand finale of the India Road Safety Mission 2019 recently culminated with a thought provoking panel discussion that was aimed at charting a roadmap for road safety in India. The discussion highlighted the importance of the 4Es of road safety – education, engineering, enforcement and emergency. The discussion also emphasised on the need to inculcate a road safety culture from a young age and teaching children about road signs and road safety from the beginning. Besides, the experts deliberated on various measures for making Indian roads safer, like the recent amendment in the Motor Vehicles Act that will help change road behaviour, or introducing categorisation of licenses for bikes and cars to make the licensing process more nuanced, to building user-friendly underpasses.
The audience raised a number of valid questions to the panellists and together the gathering attempted to device implementable and feasible solutions to the perennial problem of road safety in our country.
The India Road Safety Mission is a joint initiative of Maruti Suzuki India Limited and Times Network.
Date: September 21, 2019
Leave a Reply