Bengaluru-based ride sharing major Ola has set up a first-of-its-kind, Safety Council to help create safe and sustainable mobility and work with policy makers to enhance road safety.
According to a statement from Ola, the safety council will bring together organisations and individual achievers from various sectors viz. urban transport, climate change, women’s safety, security management, traffic management, and emergency management services.
The council will act as a catalyst towards supporting the Government’s agenda to halve the road deaths and injuries by 2020, will adopt a multi-functional approach and galvanise public private partnerships along the five pillars of the ‘United Nations Decade of Action for Road Safety’.
Its agenda also includes setting up eye check-ups and gender sensitisation training for one million driver partners. In-addition, it will also provide first responder training certification for 1 lakh driver partners.
With the idea of creating a safe, inclusive, and sustainable mobility by building and maintaining safety of the mobility ecosystem, Ola Safety Council will bring together members’ knowledge, data, technology, and local networks and will focus on areas that will make the greatest impact. The council will also work alongside policy makers, state transport authorities, traffic police departments, and other relevant stakeholders to create solutions that enhance ride and road safety on Ola as well as the ecosystem at large.
Adopted from the ‘United Nations Decade of Action for Road Safety’, the safety council will adopt a multi-functional approach work along the five pillars. These include strengthened road safety management capacities, improved safety of road infrastructure and broader transport networks, enhanced safety of vehicles, improved behaviour of road users and improved post-crash care.
“Ola as a safety first organisation, is proud to partner with eminent experts who have done exceptional work in public safety. Given the rich experience of safety experts backed by Ola’s tech prowess and country wide reach, the industry first Council will further strengthen the mobility safety ecosystem in the country. The intent is to galvanize public-private partnerships through multi-stakeholder approach, bringing in measurable impact,” Nitesh Prakash, Sr Director, Operations at Ola said.
The member organisations of the Safety Council include Indian Road Safety Campaign, road safety arm of Solve, represented by Amar Srivastava, Founder-President and Centre for Social Research, represented by Dr. Ranjana Kumari, Director.
Apart from organisations, individual members of the safety council are OP Agarwal, Head - World Resources Institute (WRI), India, Dr Parvinder Singh Pasricha, IPS (Retd.), Former Director General of Police, Maharashtra and Dr. GV Ramana Rao, Director - GVK EMRI, Emergency Medicine Learning Centre (EMLC) & Research.
“The socio-economic consequences of road accidents are an estimated $58 billion, 3% of India’s GDP. Not to mention the rehabilitation costs and the emotional toll this takes on the society. The council is currently working on a series of concrete measures that we plan to announce in the coming year and Solve's Road Safety arm, Indian Road Safety Campaign (IRSC), is looking forward to partnering with Ola on these measures. Since IRSC, Solve believes in the power of youth, technology, and collaboration to achieve Vision Zero for India, partnering with an organisation with similar belief would obviously strengthen and scale our efforts towards the same,” Amar Srivastava, Founder and President, Solve, and Ola's Safety Council Member said.