Alarmingly rising road accidents have town planners and transport experts across the globe deeply concerned.

Reports suggest that every 6 seconds someone is killed or injured on the road with nearly 1.2 million lives lost from road crashes, with figures expected to rise further!! Poignantly, road accidents claim more lives than AIDS, Malaria or TB even though the victims are healthy prior to their untimely deaths, leaving behind orphaned families. It is disquieting that authorities and masses alike have come to accept the road crash deaths as a price to pay for moving into the modern and sophisticated world.

Yet, the concerned authorities are not fully conversant on how to prevent road accidents by adopting simple road safety measures.

To create awareness on this subject and to train people, three Global organizations –CII, Shell and GRSP have joined hands to launch a project called Road Safety Initiative which proposes a drastic change in the way the transport sector operates across India.

The first of the initiatives called Safe Fleets is being introduced in Namma Bengaluru on the occasion of CII Institute of Quality’s 8th Anniversary Day. It is a project that encourages adoption of a Voluntary Code of Conduct for Road Safety under the People Move People Project. This aims at preventing deaths/injuries caused by road accidents by developing Road Transportation Safety Management Standards.

The Voluntary Code of Conduct covers all issues and practices relevant to Road Safety including development of Management Systems for businesses and transporters within their organizations. It includes Driver Management, Vehicle Management, Journey Management and Contractor Management.

Adopting this initiative has intrinsic benefits of not only promoting safe driving, but also help create more safe drivers on the roads who in turn prevent road crashes.