‘Safe Roads’ is a corporate social responsibility initiative undertaken by Mercedes-Benz and its group of companies to create road safety awareness in India. The roadshow is held at the Forum Sujana Mall, Kukatpally for public participation and at the Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University to orient students on road safety.
In the Safe Road shows, the purpose is to spread the message of road safety with the help of physical demonstration, visual aids and research reports. The physical demonstration is undertaken with the use of exhibits that have been brought specially from Germany providing a real life experience of safety measures.
The most popular exhibit of the show is the ‘Belt-Slide’, which allows visitors to understand the impact of seat belts in a simulated crash environment at low speed. The motive of the contraption is to increase the awareness of seat belts usage for front row passenger and driver.
New exhibits included in the show this year are: a crashed Mercedes-Benz GLC, to demonstrate the visitors an actual crashed vehicle, a Pre-Safe seat system from Mercedes which will exhibit the pre-tensions of the front seat belts, a Body in White (BiW) passenger car exhibit showing core elements of a car structure to the onlookers, different varieties of Airbags, a pair of Alcohol goggles to demonstrate the visitors of the vulnerability to impairments and understand the severe possible consequences due to alcohol consumption and last but not the least, a spanking new S-Class S500, which boasts a host of active and passive safety features, will be on display to showcase a glimpse of the future of safety from the brand.
As per a 2015 report by the Ministry of Road Transport & Highway, India has signed an agreement in the Brasilia Declaration and hence is committed to decreasing the number of road accidents and fatalities by 50 per cent by the year 2020. However, in India the implementation of an effective safety system is still a challenge since the road users do not comply with traffic rules nor do they use the safety systems onboard their vehicles.
Mercedes-Benz hence has conceptualised the Safe Roads in an effort to reduce this astounding fatality rate on Indian roads, by creating more awareness on road safety. The German manufacturer believes that such initiatives can bring a road safety awareness that supports a new culture of road safety for Indians. Over 70 per cent of the fatalities can be reduced in the next 10 years only by educating and enforcing of safety rules and by creating awareness among the Indian road-users.
And following the successful event at Hyderabad, the Safe Roads initiative will be travelling next to Kolkata.
