National Road Safety Week 2021: Diageo India’s CSR Initiative Addressing Road Safety

The World Health Organisation report on Global road safety has estimated that India suffers a loss of $58 billion because of road accidents every year. India is burdened with 12.5 per cent of the total road accidents across the world. To curb such incidents and spread awareness about road safety, January 11^th to 17^th is celebrated as National Road Safety Week in India.

India Inc has been playing a significant role in promoting road safety in India. One of the corporates pioneering the cause of road safety is Diageo India.

Diageo India’s Road Safety Programme

Diageo India has rolled out a comprehensive Road Safety Programme as part of its CSR initiative, which addresses every aspect of road safety in a holistic manner. It follows a 4E strategy wherein the first E stands for Education – dealing with spreading awareness, the second E represents Enforcement wherein the organization assists the traffic police in enforcing the traffic rules and training them on efficient ways to manage the traffic; the third E stands for Emergency services wherein the organization provides first aid treatment, quality emergency services, better emergency response mechanism etc; and lastly, better Engineering for safer roads.

Implementation of the Road Safety Programme by Diageo

The organisation implements its CSR program by establishing partnerships with Government (centre and state), law enforcers, media, universities, NGO partners and citizens.

In partnership with the government and law enforcers, Diageo India has organised capacity building training in road accident investigation and traffic management. It collaborated with the Ministry of Road Transport and Highway (MoRTH) and the NGO, Institute of Road Traffic Education (IRTE), to implement the program in 64 cities and 18 states across the country.

In collaboration with the media, the organisation creates high-visibility campaigns, both in metro cities and regional markets to create awareness amongst consumers on road safety. In 2018, it collaborated with NDTV and Indian School of Management & Entrepreneurship (ISME) to host a panel discussion to deliberate on solutions and share best practices and learnings that will help address the issues of road safety in India.

Impact of Diageo’s Road Safety Program

The Road safety programme of Diageo is currently in its 6^th year. In all these years, the organisation has been able to create an impact in over 19 states and 67 cities of India. It has trained over 6,200 police officials and educated 6,000 commercial vehicle drivers and over 6,000 university students.

The organisation has also partnered with United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) through which it runs training in 15 countries across Africa, Asia, Latin and Central America, with a focus on countries with the highest death rates related to road traffic accidents. Through these training programs the organisation will reach approx., 6,000 people across 60 countries who are a mix of government officials, young people, and other relevant stakeholders.

This article is part of a series on National Road Safety Week