Safe Fleets was officially launched on 9th May 2009 during the Anniversary Day function of the Confederation of Indian Industries Institute of Quality (CII IQ), at their national headquarters in Bangalore. The function was well attended by eminent personalities like Madhavan Nair, Chairman of ISRO, Muthuraman, Managing Director of Tata Steel, and others. Although the core concept of the Road Transport Safety Management system is a Shell initiative, it has been further developed with the active involvement of other organisations from across the country. External stakeholders like regulators (traffic police), transporters (contractors), transport specialists, driver training agencies, government carriers (local and interstate bus services), facility managers and safety managers from different industries and the civil society were invited to forums on issues and concerns around Road Transport Safety. The outcome from the brainstorming sessions during these meetings lead to a well thought out and value-added Road Transport Safety Management system, and a Voluntary Standard detailing out the codes of conduct. The system also constitutes driver management, vehicle management, vendor management and journey management. CII IQ currently hosts Safe Fleets and acts as the secretariat for the unique road safety programme. Safe Fleets members have the advantage of being among the first to implement the Road Transport Safety Management system and leverage opportunities from associations with other like-minded companies. Infosys, Wipro, Accenture, Goldman Sachs and Intel are some of the companies who have enrolled as members of Safe Fleets. Building on the past successes and having a common interest, in late 2008, the key partners of this initiative - Shell, Global Road Safety Partnership and CII - agreed that the next stage of development required a broader India-wide reach with an initial focus on Safe Fleets in Bangalore. The vision of Safe Fleets is to make a significant contribution to achieve a sustainable reduction in unacceptable death tolls and injuries from road accidents in India. Safe Fleets intends to go beyond the IT, ITES and BPO sectors, and be present and be heard across the nation. |
Global Road Safety Partnership (GRSP) has been active in Bangalore since 2000. GRSP has undertaken local activities like ‘The Safe Routes to Schools’ programme that resulted in child road fatalities numbers dropping from 41 to 16, a campaign against drunk drivers and riders, which achieved a three-fold increase in enforcement, and also the introduction of Road Safety Zones in the Indiranagar area of Bangalore, with estimated road safety savings of INR 12 million over three years. Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) an Indian NGO came into existence more than 100 years back. This well recognized organisation represents Indian industries across various sectors. It has a direct membership of over 7800 organisations from the private as well as public sectors, including SMEs and MNCs, and an indirect membership of over 90,000 companies from around 385 national and regional sectoral associations. |
