With a view to reduce the number of road-accident deaths on the Mumbai-Pune Expressway (MPEW), the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC) has today signed an MoU with Mahindra & Mahindra and road safety NGO, SaveLife Foundation. The collaboration will attempt to transform the MPEW into a 'Zero Fatality' corridor over the next 3-4 years.

The collaboration also includes Maharashtra Highway Police, IRB Infrastructure, DY Patil University, Ogilvy, JP Research and several hospitals, including those in the vicinity of the expressway.The initiative will focus on improving the four Es on road safety – Engineering, Emergency Care, Enforcement and Education.

The initiative was launched by Eknath Shinde, minister of Public Works and Vijay Deshmukh, minister of state for Public Works, Government of Maharashtra in the presence of senior leadership from MSRDC, Mahindra, SaveLIFE and other partners.

MSRDC has said, "Every kilometre of the Mumbai-Pune Expressway has been surveyed for possible accident prone spots."

“MSRDC is committed to create the safest roads in India, and hence has associated with SaveLIFE foundation and Mahindra on this unique initiative. We invite the general public to support us on this initiative by ensuring they drive safely on the expressway,” added RL Mopalwar, MD and vice chairman, MSRDC.

Also speaking on the occasion was Veejay Ram Nakra, senior VP, sales & customer care, Automotive Division, M&M: “As responsible citizens, we at Mahindra are committed towards making India’s roads safer. In fact, road safety is expected to improve significantly when every component of the road system has safety as an inherent virtue. Hence, this initiative is our contribution to make roads safer.”

Mahindra will be supporting the initiative under its ‘Rise for Good’ CSR program and will contribute by way of employee volunteer time. During the Road Safety week held last month, the automaker trained 1,600 drivers. In the next year, it plans to extend this training to over 2,000 CV drivers.