In an effort to reduce the rising incidence of road accidents in the country, Korean carmaker Hyundai Motor India today launched a series of short films on select key causes of road accidents.

The films have been made with an objective of generating a change in behavioural pattern of motorists and are based on four such contributing factors such as drunken driving, overspeeding, usage of mobile phone while driving, and not wearing a seatbelt. 

“I believe the role of a responsible automotive manufacturer goes beyond just bringing in products with active and passive safety features. It is also important to highlight the behavioural aspect of how one should be responsible while driving a car. The idea of this campaign is about creating and improving awareness about safe driving practices,” Rakesh Srivastava, company’s senior vice president of Sales and Marketing, told Autocar India.

The carmaker has roped in Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan as the brand ambassador for the campaign, which is called #BeTheBetterGuy, with the intention of having a stronger impact and emotional connect with the audience.

This is the second phase of the safety campaign, which was first rolled out by Hyundai Motor India last year as a part of its CSR or corporate social responsibility initiative. Known as ‘Safe Move-Traffic Safety Campaign', the initiative was taken up in collaboration with the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) and aimed to promote road and traffic safety habits amongst children.

“One of the feedback that we got from the earlier campaign was that we were only getting across to the people who had access to us. So we’ve initiated this second phase on a digital platform,” Srivastava added. The short films will be launched on the company’s micro site.

It is estimated that over 2,00,000 people die in India each year due to road accidents, according to the Global Road Safety Report by the World Health Organisation (WHO).  There has been a steady rise in incidents of deaths due to road crashes since 2007, with a brief fall in 2012, the report added.