Accroding to a report by the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, 4,80, 652 people were killed in road traffic accidents in India in 2017. A heterogeneous traffic mix that includes high-speed vehicles sharing the road space with vulnerable road users, as well as unsafe road infrastructure and vehicles that are in poor condition, all contribute to the high fatality rates seen on India’s roads. Yes, India’s roads are perhaps the most dangerous in the world. It’s easy to point fingers and assign blame, but the fact is that enhancing road safety is such a complex task that we all should shoulder the responsibility to succeed in this area.
Hyundai India has taken the onus of propagating the message of road safety. Hyundai understands that it is not enough to design and engineer safer cars with the best active and passive safety systems today’s technology can offer, but also work to change the environment the cars operate in. It thus launched the ‘Safe Move’ traffic safety campaign in association with the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways in 2015. The campaign decided to target children, as they will be tomorrow’s citizens and road users.
| Causes of death | |
|---|---|
| Deaths due to driver error | 80.3% |
| Deaths due to overspeeding | 49% |
| Deaths due to talking on phones while driving | 2138 |
| Deaths due to intake of alcohol or drugs | 4.1% |
Under the Traffic Safety Campaign, children were educated on traffic safety through both online and offline engagements to propagate the message of road safety. In addition to this, special school contact and residential welfare association programmes were lined up to spread the traffic safety message across five cities including Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata and Ahmedabad.
Hyundai also initiated a special school contact programme to reach out to the children in these cities. The sessions were made more interactive through ‘TruDO’, an interactive board game using flash cards, which made learning about road safety more fun. To further engage the children, Hyundai also specially developed a website on road safety for them. This extension of the ‘Safe Move’ initiative carried news, animation episodes, online engagements, and car production, car history and car evolution-related content, as well as registration for the various programmes under the campaign.
To give added momentum to the ‘Safe Move’ campaign, they reached out to Resident Welfare Associations in these cities with a contact programme that involved interactive sessions and games that taught traffic safety to both children and their parents.
The Hyundai road safety campaign has reached over 2,00,000 students, over 35,000 mall visitors and 23,000 residents across 292 schools, 14 malls and 146 RWAs, respectively, across India; as well as over 35,000 visitors during the Krackerjack Karnival in New Delhi.
| Road accident statistics | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Parameter | 2015 | 2016 | % change over previous year |
| Road accidents | 5,01,423 | 4,80,652 | -4.1% |
| Fatal accidents | 1,31,726 | 1,36,071 | 3.3 |
| Total deaths | 1,46,133 | 1,50,785 | 3.2 |
| Total injured | 5,00,279 | 4,94,624 | -1.1 |
| Accident severity (Deaths per 100 accidents) | 29.1 | 31.4 | 7.9 |
To further boost its campaign for road safety, Hyundai started the #BeTheBetterGuy initiative on the digital platform, targeting young drivers. The initiative consisted of a series of films starring Bollywood Superstar, Shah Rukh Khan, and aimed at creating a positive change in society and inspire people to adhere to traffic rules.
The films show the driver taking responsibility for their individual actions. While some people are responsible, others do not appreciate their behaviour. These are the unsung heroes on the roads – they are the Better Guys and Hyundai salutes these heroes so that they can be role models for others and help bring about behaviour change. The films are unique in nature as they focus on various situations in our day-to-day life, highlighting actions which can prevent mishaps.
The #BeTheBetterGuy campaign draws attention to five critical issues pertaining to road safety: Underage driving, drunken driving, use of mobile phone while driving, overspeeding and traffic signal violations. #BeTheBetterGuy became a powerful pledge and has crossed 17 million views since its release on November 24, 2017.
Hyundai has invested much time, effort and money to advocate the message of road safety. The ‘Safe Move’ campaign has been highly appreciated by all and has received many road safety campaign awards. But it all comes to naught if you too don’t do your part. Belt up, switch off your mobile phone and follow the traffic rules. It’s really that simple.
If you are reading this between April 23-30, 2018 – remember, this is Road Safety Week. Most important of all, remember that every day is a Road Safety Day.
