With a view to dramatically reduce the high number of road accident fatalities on the Mumbai-Pune Expressway (MPEW), the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC) 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 the 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 & Mahindra, SaveLIFE and other partners.

MSRDC claims that "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 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,” said R L Mopalwar, MD and vice-chairman, MSRDC.

Veejay Ram Nakra, senior VP, sales & customer care, Automotive Division, M&M, said: “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 including the vehicle, infrastructure, traffic engineering, driver training, road etiquettes, enforcement, education, awareness, as well as laws that govern the road system, have safety as an inherent virtue. Hence, this initiative is our contribution to make roads safer.”

Mahindra & Mahindra will be supporting the initiative under its ‘Rise for Good’ CSR programme and will contribute by way of employee volunteer time. During the Road Safety week held last month, the automaker also trained 1,600 drivers. It now plans to train over 2,000 commercial vehicle drivers over the next 12 months.

Jayant Bhatia, former chief secretary of Maharashtra and chief mentor at the SaveLIFE Foundation, concluded, “Road safety has to be a collaborative effort to be successful. We are thankful to MSRDC, Mahindra, Maharashtra Police and all other partners for coming together with us to attempt this unique initiative.”