Ashoka Buildcon holds record 600th road safety awareness program

Ashoka Buildcon, one of the leading highway developers in India, conducted its 600th road safety awareness session earlier this month.

What was different about this particular session was that it comprised 2,700 participants in Nashik, helping it enter into the Guinness World Records for ‘Largest Road Lesson’. According to Ashish Katariya, director, Ashoka Concessions, who spearheads the company’s safety initiatives, “We are happy that our 600^th road safety session will be getting global recognition. Ashoka Buildcon has always taken up road safety as a serious issue.”

The company, which introduced its road safety mission three years ago, typically conducts a series of programmes in the month of January. The campaign includes activities like road safety awareness lessons in schools and colleges, interactive sessions with truck/bus drivers, free eye/health check-up camps, public awareness campaigns through public address systems and distribution of pamphlets.

Till now, road safety awareness lessons have been conducted in 600 schools in 17 cities in seven states of the country where over 280,000 participants been schooled in road safety.

Recognising hazards at road construction sites, over the past few years, the company has deployed advanced road safety measures for all its projects. It has not only incorporated best industry practices to ensure safety of its workforce as well as road users but has also provided alcohol breath analysers and speed detectors to police departments in a number of locations in a bid to make Indian highways safer.

At the session in Nashik, Deputy Commissioner of Police, Nashik, Vijay Patil conducted a training programme wherein he explained traffic rules and regulations and stressed that safety cannot be attained by compulsion alone -- it should be self-driven.

The event also saw Satish Parakh, managing director of Ashoka Buildcon, inaugurate the Ashoka Road Safety App which has features such as location tracking, speeding alert and panic alert among others.