April 23: Maruti Suzuki India has opened a new Institute of Driving and Traffic Research (IDTR) at Rohtak. With this new facility, the carmaker expands its road safety training infrastructure across the country to include six IDTRs (two each in Haryana, and Delhi NCR, one each in Uttarakhand and Gujarat) and over 200 Maruti Suzuki Driving schools. The 14-acre facility in Rohtak has two driving simulators, six classrooms with space for 40 trainees each, 1.8km of driver training tracks, six cars and two buses as training vehicles, and a driving laboratory.

The carmaker’s road safety initiative has also seen it set up Maruti Driving Schools in partnership with its dealer partners; over 200 such schools are currently operational across the country. The state-of the-art driving training facility in Rohtak is an example of Public-Private-Partnership between the company and the Haryana government. IDTR Rohtak is expected to train over 20,000 people in safe driving, annually.

Maruti also holds an annual Young Driver of the Year contest with Autocar India, Autocar Professional’s sister magazine, which is a nation-wide hunt for the best driving talent and where the winners are chosen on the basis of their safe driving skills.

According to a report compiled by the International Road Federation, India loses 160,000 lives and around Rs 100,000 crore in road accidents every year. While India has only one percent of the global vehicular population, it still accounts for over 10 percent road fatalities, at a global level. And an overwhelming 78 percent of road accidents are caused due to the driver’s fault.