IIT Madras, SNS Foundation partner for technology-driven road safety research, interventions

NEW DELHI: The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras Centre of Excellence for Road Safety (CoERS) has recently collaborated with SNS Foundation for capacity, capability improvement, research and development on human behavioural aspects of road safety.

With an aim to train nearly 2,000 drivers through this collaboration, IIT Madras and SNS Foundation signed an agreement on March 1, 2023.

As per the official release, the partnership will build a simulator-based curriculum and delivery for the training of trainers on road safety rules, driving etiquette and behaviour for school and college buses and vans in and around Chennai and can help develop adherence to road rules. It will also nurture ideas in the field of road safety and help mature them into products using the CoERS ecosystem by organising hackathons.

Marking the beginning of this partnership, S Sarathi, Group President, Anand Group, Joint Managing Director, M/S HLMAIL, said, “As an automotive components manufacturer working in safety systems, we are deeply concerned with the number of accidents and fatalities on road. As socially responsible organisations, we are happy to partner with the Centre of Excellence for Road Safety to work on research on direct intervention to improve stakeholder capacity and capabilities in India. We look forward to having a long-term role in this journey towards safe roads in India.”

As per Professor Manu Santhanam, Dean (Industrial Consultancy and Sponsored Research), IIT Madras, there is a need to increase the awareness among people about how they utilise the road resources provided.

Elaborating on the collaboration, Professor Venkatesh Balasubramanian, Head, CoERS and Professor, RBG Labs, Department of Engineering Design, IIT Madras, said, "The key components involved in having safe roads are the vehicle, infrastructure and human interaction with the two. While there has been significant research and development in the vehicle and road engineering, there is a significant opportunity for improvements in Human Behavioural Aspects.

"In this partnership, we aspire to train drivers who shall be further training impressionable children during their transit on the road to school. We hope this intervention will result in not only development of participants but also help put together an objective driver training manual for drivers involved with logistics operations, particularly with impressionable children”, he further added.