Ola sets up safety council to reduce fatalities caused by road accident

Indian ride-hailing provider Ola has setup up a council of experts who will work with the government and other institutions to come up with solutions to reduce the number of fatalities caused by road accidents.

The initiative, named Safety Council, will work towards improving collaboration between individuals and organisations in sectors such as urban transport, climate change, women’s safety, security management, traffic management, and emergency management services.

“Ola 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,” said Nitesh Prakash, Senior Director of Operations at Ola.

While Ola outlined that the council would work towards improving the safety of infrastructure, vehicles, behaviour of road users and post-crash care, it did not outline how it plans to do so just yet. The company did say that it would look adoption and proliferation of safety technology in the coming months.

The council will adopt the working principles of the UN’s plan to reduce the number of road accident fatalities. Moreover, the programme is in accordance with the government of India’s plan to halve the number of road accident deaths by the year 2020.

India is home to the most dangerous roads in the world, accounting for the largest number of deaths caused by road accidents. So far the government has clamped down on vehicle manufacturers to introduce safety technologies such as airbags and ABS in more of their models, making it mandatory in a lot of cases.

So far, Ola has partnered with the Indian Road Safety Campaign, Centre for Social Research, apart from individual members from the World Resources Institute, Emergency Medicine Learning Centre (EMLC) & Research and Parvinder Singh Pasricha, a former Director General of Police from Maharashtra.