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Maruti Suzuki India, the country’s largest car maker recently announced its plans on opening more driving schools across the country. By more driving schools it means that it aims to increase the number of driving schools to 400 which is more than a double of the current number and all this in a span of only 2 to 3 years.

Mayank Pareek, the Managing Executive Officer of Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) in a statement said, “So far we have trained over 10 lakh people… we now target to double the network of Maruti driving schools to 400 in the next 2-3 years.”

So far, the company has trained 5 lakh people under the National Road Safety Mission (NRSM), which is its flagship program and around 10 lakh have been trained in the last decade. NRSM was launched in the year 2008 and has recently achieved the milestone of training 5 lakh people under this program. Out of the 5 lakh people trained by MSI, 1.47 lakh belong to the economically challenged sections of the society.

MSI currently has a network of 6 Institutes of Driving and Traffic Research (ITDR) and has a total of 192 driving schools across the country. State governments are also showing interest in setting up ITDRs along with MSI in order to institutionalize driving training in India. MSI is also willing to provide guidance and support to other state governments who have not yet joined but are showing interest in this initiative.

Talking about the importance of this plan, Pareek said “In terms of fatalities, around 1,60,000 lives are lost annually in road accidents. As the automobile sector continues to grow, there is a need to bring in high quality training institutes, which help institutionalize high ‘quality training’ on road safety.” To this he also added that in road accidents, India loses near about 1,00,000 crore every year.

Although MSI has actively been involved in road safety since the year 2000, only in 2008 did the company start with an organized structure in the form of its flagship NRSM program.