Road Safety Week 2021: Mahindra Group Takes a Strategic Approach

Homegrown automaker Mahindra Group has been creating awareness about road safety for years. Companies within the group participate in Road Safety Week every year. In 2020, the theme for its interventions for this cause was ‘Bringing Change Through Youth’. That week, employees were included in a special campaign across all locations.

Mahindra Group ropes in ESOP

Employee Social Options (ESOP) volunteers put in a considerable 17,337 hours into the campaign for safer roads. ESOP volunteers worked with government servants, traffic departments and the police to conduct sessions on trauma care, organised blood donation drives and distributed safety materials. The focus was on reaching out to the young. Dealers weren’t ignored during Road Safety Week. The Mahindra Group held driver education programmes at over 550 dealer workshops.

Safer Drives, Safer Lives Campaign

More recently, Mahindra & Mahindra tied up with SaveLIFE Foundation to commence the ‘Safer Drives Safer Lives’ CSR initiative. The company invited 30 journalists who write about automobiles to drive the Mahindra XUV300 in three cities on September 15. It was all for the cause of spreading the word about ‘on-road safety’. This particular XUV has been dubbed one of India’s safest cars and has the highest Global NCAP safety ratings for adults and children.

After the drive, the media persons participated in related activities that upped their knowledge about the cause. The ‘Safer Drives Safer Lives’ campaign will promote road safety through a host of other activities that stress on using a vehicle’s safety features right.

Award-winning CSR project

Mahindra & Mahindra’s flagship CSR project in this segment bagged the FICCI Road Safety Award 2017. M&M won the award for the ‘Zero Fatality Corridor on the Mumbai Pune Expressway’. FICCI noted how M&M’s work in engineering, enforcement, emergency care and education on the Mumbai Pune Expressway led to fewer accident deaths.

The goal of the landmark project is to reduce the annual number of fatalities on that Expressway. It was launched on 22nd February 2016. In the first nine months of 2017, the Zero Fatality Corridor project lowered road crash fatalities by 45%. NGO SaveLIFE Foundation, which works for road safety in India, is the implementing partner that took a 360-degree approach for effective results.

The Mahindra Group ropes in employee volunteers, involves external stakeholders, educates customers and maps out accident-prone regions for its road safety initiatives. This strategic CSR model has led to tangible results in saving lives.

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