Maruti to more than double driving schools to 400

The company has already trained 10 lakh people in the last decade, out of which 5 lakh have been trained under its flagship programme -- National Road Safety Mission (NRSM), which was launched in December 2008.

"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," Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) Managing Executive Office (Marketing and Sales) Mayank Pareek said in a statement.

The company has a network of 6 Institutes of Driving and Traffic Research (IDTR) and 192 Maruti driving schools. Various state governments have joined hands with MSI in setting up IDTRs and institutionalising driving training in the country.

The company is looking forward to support and guidance of several other state governments to strengthen this initiative, Pareek said. Under NRSM, the company today crossed the milestone of having imparted training to 5 lakh people. Of this, it has trained 1.47 lakh people from the economically challenged sections. MSI had sponsored their training and many of them are "meaningfully engaged" today, the company said.

On the importance of this initiative, 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 institutionalise high 'quality training' on road safety."

As per the latest report compiled by International Road Federation, India loses close to about Rs 1,00,000 crore every year in road accidents, he added. MSI has been working on road safety since 2000, but it was only in 2008 when the company gave a formal structure to this initiatives through the flagship NRSM programme.