Toyota Kirloskar Motor’s Employees Volunteer to Support “Road Safety” Drive in Bangalore City

Taking forward its commitment as a Safety Leader, Toyota Kirloskar Motor (TKM) organized yet another social drive under its Corporate Social Responsibility initiative, to enhance “Road Safety” in Bangalore city. 

In an endeavor to create a more-safer society, Toyota Kirloskar Motor (TKM) today conducted its fifth activity under ‘ICARE’, an employee voluntary initiative to build basic road safety requirements in prime road junctions of Bangalore city. More than 100 employees jointly participated towards improving road safety infrastructure to ensure the safety of the road users. 

The identified roads are potential risk interms of road accidents. In order to avoid such safety risks, as a preventive measure - Toyota identified the road safety structures to be installed at prime locations. This is to ensure the road users are safe and stay alert on the roads, thereby minimizing the road safety related mishaps. 

Proper road safety systems helps to create a conducive environment for road users and eases the vehicular movement. This voluntary activity would involve installation of road safety - Sign Boards, Solar Blinkers, Cat Eyes Reflectors, Convex Mirrors at turns in the Primrose Road, Brunton Road and Magrath road of Bengaluru. With these basic safety measures on the roads, Toyota hopes to prevent road accidents and fatalities, reduce congestion and pollution. 

Speaking on this initiative, Naveen Soni, Vice President - Toyota Kirloskar Motor said, “At Toyota, we believe in integrated strength to give back to the society we live in. Our objective is not only manufacturing ever better cars, but also enrich community lives. 

Safety has been the DNA of Toyota and of prime importance. And hence, we started the awareness program on road safety to school children from 2007 onwards. We were the first corporate to set the road safety infrastructure at schools with the philosophy of “Seeing is Believing” to bring about a positive behavior change amongst children towards developing responsible future road users. 

‘ICARE’ is driven solely by the passion of our employees and shared responsibility to make a big difference in the society we live in. These kinds of activities empower our employees to be the change makers in the community and support them grow as individuals with real understanding of the social issues around them. Our employees have been actively involved to drive many CSR interventions in the areas of health, environment and education. This initiative further focuses on road safety being one of the key national issues. It is heartening to see our employees as social enthusiast, joining in large numbers to support this road safety initiative and needless to mention with “Safety” culture that is so deep rooted in each one of our employees being part of their work culture. 

As a company, we are committed to the cause of Safety. We hope to see this transcend beyond vehicles into everyday lives of everyone while using safer roads.” He added. 

Commenting on the employee engagement initiatives by TKM, Vikram Kirloskar, Vice Chairman, Toyota Kirloskar Motor, said, “I would like to thank Prime Minister, Narendra Modi for launching a digital platform “Self 4 Society”, and encouraging corporates to organize employee engagement initiatives for social causes. At Toyota, we are always committed to give back to the community in our own way and try to uplift the lives of the underprivileged. We are happy to align Toyota’s employee engagement programs with “Self 4 Society”, thus strengthening the impact of the causes we stand for. We would like to dedicate this program to the “Self 4 Society” initiative by the Prime Minister”. 

Toyota follows an integrated safety approach towards addressing the grave issues of road safety in our country, aiming to build a safer community by adopting 3 dimensional concept – Manufacturing Safe Cars, Developing Safe Drivers & Building Safer Environment. 

In pursuance of its safety mission, “Safest Car with Safest Driver”, Toyota Kirloskar Motor has been consistently engaged in Road Safety initiatives since 2005 through various pan India campaigns. TKM launched Toyota Driving School [TDS] across India in cities like Kochi, Lucknow, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Chennai [2 driving schools], Faridabad, Surat and Vijayawada. With TDS, the company aims to bring down the rising number of road accidents caused majorly due to human error, by developing Safety Ambassadors.  The training module will integrate technical expertise along with enhancing behavioral skills to create awareness about safety nationwide. The. Toyota Driving School has till date enrolled 4,500 plus. By 2020 the company plans to cross 50 such schools across India, voicing their traffic safety commitment louder. 

As a safety leader, Toyota initiated the Toyota Safety Education Program (TSEP) in 2007 which aims at educating school children and teachers through phase wise approach on important aspects of road safety and eventually passing on the learning to the general public. Toyota has educated more than 700,000 school children  on road safety across India until  now as part of  “Toyota Safety Education Programme” 

Further the company has also launched “Safety Model Schools” as part of the “Team Toyota Activity (TTA)”, aiming to enhance safety awareness among the school children, teachers, parents and school vehicle drivers on responsible road safety habits, to create a safer traffic environment for all. The unique comprehensive program will help school children know & learn about the road safety habits in their daily curriculum. The program is aimed at developing Safety Ambassadors in schools by creating safety zones within school premises, implementation of Toyota Safety Education Program (TSEP), and training of school vehicle drivers and creation of safety group in the school. So far, Toyota Dealers & Suppliers have rolled out this initiative in partnership with Toyota at Delhi, Kochi, Varanasi, Hissar, Rewari & Kolkata.

To ensure safest drivers on Indian roads, TKM has been conducting Driver Training Programs & Health Check-Up Camps for Airport taxi drivers in Hyderabad, Bangalore and Delhi International Airport since 2014 as part of the CSR Initiatives on road safety awareness with over 5,000 drivers participating in the campaign till date. Through this initiative Toyota aims at creating a strong road safety sense amongst the drivers, and encourage them to adopt safer driving practices. 

Through varied CSR projects, Toyota has touched more than 11,00,000 lives. Toyota will further continue its various CSR interventions from a longer-term perspective and development of socio-economic stature of the society, touching many more lives to make a difference in each one’s well-being.