Maruti Suzuki’s `National Road Safety Mission’ attains the 500,000 mark

Car Market Leader Maruti Suzuki’s flagship road safety initiative on promoting safe driving, `National Road Safety Mission’, today attained the milestone of 500,000 trainees.Under the programme launched in December 2008, the Company has successfully trained over 500,000 people so far. Out of these 500,000 trainees, over, 147,000 are from economically challenged sections, who are beneficiaries of this special programme. They were sponsored by Maruti Suzuki and many of them are meaningfully engaged today.

In addition, the Company has successfully expanded its training infrastructure in the form of 6 operational Institutes of Driving and Traffic Research and over 192 Maruti Driving Schools thriving across the country. With this special infrastructure in place, the Company has in a small way institutionalized driving training in the country and brought in international best practices to the Country. On the occasion, Mr. Mayank Pareek, Managing Executive Office, Marketing & Sales, said, “The milestone of training 500,000 people in safe driving, is only a humble beginning, compared to the scale of the issue.

The scale can be gauged from the latest report compiled by International Road Federation, which states that India loses close to about Rs 100,000 Crore every year in road accidents. In terms of fatalities, around 160,000 lives are lost annually in road accidents. As the automobile sector continues to grow, there is a need to bring in high quality training institutes, which help institutionalize high `quality training’ on road safety. This requires a 360-degree approach and involvement of several bodies. We hope to be the catalyst for other organizations to join the road safety efforts.”

Adds Mr. Pareek, “I take this opportunity to thank our dealer partners, who have partnered with us in setting up state-of-the art driving training infrastructure in the country. With their support, we are successfully running over 192 driving schools in the country. Various State governments have joined hands with us in setting up IDTRs and institutionalizing driving training in the country. Going forward, we look forward to support and guidance of several other state governments to strengthen this initiative of national importance.” Announcing the road map ahead, Mr. Pareek adds, “So far we have trained over 10 lakh people through our existing network of 6 IDTRs and 192 Maruti Driving Schools. We now target to double the network of Maruti Driving Schools to 400 in the next 2 to 3 years. This will help us train more people by spreading high quality structured driving training in the country.”

To strengthen its road safety initiatives , the Company recently, added another interesting format in the form of `Road Safety Knowledge Centre’, in partnership with the Gurgaon police. This new platform targets to enhance traffic education and inculcate safe driving habits for commuters of Gurgaon. In addition to existing driving training modules, the centre has been equipped to offer specialized training to traffic violators.

Background on Maruti Suzuki and Road Safety

Maruti Suzuki has been working on road safety since 2000. But it was only in 2008 when the company gave a formal structure to its initiatives on road safety through its flagship National Road Safety Mission (NRSM) programme. Over 10 lakh persons have benefited from the various Road Safety initiatives of Maruti Suzuki. These include over 5 lakh people trained since December 2008 under the National Road Safety Mission. Out of these 5 lakh people, 1.4 lakh (over 28 per cent) are from the underprivileged sections of the society who have been sponsored by Maruti Suzuki. Under NRSM, Maruti Suzuki offers training in road safety, scales up and also supports infrastructure development with partnerships, and help government and industry in road safety initiatives.

World class Driving Training infrastructure set up by Maruti Suzuki

Over the last decade, Maruti Suzuki has developed two successful forms of driving training infrastructure: One is in association with state governments (public-private partnership model) and the other is in association with its dealers.

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