IIT-Madras partners with SNS Foundation to train school, college bus drivers on road safety rules

CHENNAI: Indian Institute of Technology - Madras (IIT-Madras) Centre of Excellence for Road Safety (CoERS) is partnering with SNS Foundation to train school and college bus drivers on road safety rules and driving behaviour.
An MoU was signed between the two organisations to train 2,000 drivers in and around Chennai in the near future. The key outcomes expected from this agreement include building a simulator-based curriculum and delivery for training the trainers on road safety rules, driving behaviour for school and college buses and vans and nurturing ideas in the field of road safety and help those ideas mature into products by using the CoERS ecosystem.
Manu Santhanam, dean, Industrial Consultancy and Sponsored Research, IIT-Madras, said, “There is a lot of coverage in the media about road accidents, which happen despite good roads. A lot has to be done with respect to driver behaviour and enhancing vehicular safety.”
Stressing the need to increase the awareness among the people, he said, "Research being done by IIT-Madras under this agreement will look into these aspects of driver behaviour and help train people understand what it takes to have a safe driving approach."
Venkatesh Balasubramanian, head, CoERS, IIT-Madras, who is coordinating this initiative, said, “The key components involved in having safe roads are the vehicle, infrastructure and human interaction with the two. While there has been significant research and development in vehicle and road engineering, there is a significant opportunity for improvements in human behavioural aspects."
"In this partnership, we aspire to train drivers who shall be further training impressionable children during their transit on the road to school. We hope this intervention will result in not only development of participants but also help put together an objective driver training manual for drivers involved with logistics operations, particularly with impressionable children," he added.
"As an automotive components manufacturer working in safety systems, we are deeply concerned about the number of road accidents and fatalities. As socially responsible organisations, we are happy to partner with the Centre of Excellence for Road Safety to work on research on direct intervention to improve stakeholder capacity and capabilities in India," said S Sarathi, group president, Anand Group.