The week-long national Road Safety Week which concluded on January 17 saw multiple activities undertaken by the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM), which saw participation from over 4,000 automobile dealers from across the nation.

Conducted in active participation with the traffic police departments of various cities, the program successfully educated thousands of people on various aspects related to road safety and better road traffic management.

Besides New Delhi, the programme was conducted in New Delhi NCR, Mumbai, Haridwar, Ludhiana, Chandigarh, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Jaipur, Andhra Pradesh, Kolkata, Bangalore, Pondicherry, and many others.  Around 10,000 school children participated in different activities like drawing and quiz competitions, street plays and jingles, all aimed at increasing awareness about road safety.

Speaking about the initiatives, P K Banerjee, deputy executive director, SIAM, said: “We are overwhelmed with the response we got from various stakeholders including school children, THE Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, Delhi Traffic Police and others who actively participated in helping us to reach out to the larger audiences to promote road safety. Just like the Capital City, the response from other cities too was overwhelming and encouraging.”

K K Gandhi, executive director, SIAM said, “It is a noble initiative by various stakeholders with an aim of making our roads safer and better for everyone. The overwhelming response from school children ensures that our future generation will be more sensitised towards this important issue.” 

During Road Safety Week, SIAM conducted a host of activities including a ‘Walk for Safety’ flagged off by Nitin Gadkari, Minister of Road Transport & Highways; a road safety interaction meeting in association with CII; an interactive workshop in collaboration with MoRTH, Delhi Police and ACMA to share views and deliberate on education, enforcement, engineering and emergency care, collectively termed the ‘4E of Road Safety’; distribution of prizes to the winners of debate, quiz and painting competitions; and a refresher workshop on road safety for three-wheeler, cab drivers and commercial vehicle drivers. The training was held at the Institute of Driving Training and Research (IDTR), Sarai Kale Khan and Driving Training Institute (DTI), Burari. The workshop was organized in association with Delhi Traffic Police and was supported by IDTR, Maruti Suzuki India and Ashok Leyland.