Driving Schools and Poor Road infrastructure in India

With the structure of the roads the way it is.. It probably is important to teach people how to drive in that space! It would also make sense for companies like Maruti – and other Auto companies to sponsor the Road infrastructure.. for the better the infrastructure is the more cars and autos will be sold!! So if I were Ford… I would have sponsored a highway by now and called it Ford Expressway – with my ads all over the place and repair/maintenance stations all over on the route.. can you imagine the leverage that will give the company in India??

Creating new benchmarks in safety, Maruti Udyog Limited on Monday announced it would set up 15 world class driving schools in India in the next three months.

The Maruti driving schools, opened at Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram, are the first in the country.

Among the cities where MDS would be opened are Jammu, Delhi, Gurgaon and Chennai, MUL director (marketing) K Saito told reporters in Kochi.

As part of a pilot project, Maruti opened driving schools at Bangalore, Chandigarh and Kollam last year and taking into consideration the overwhelming response, it was decided to start more such schools, he said.

Pointing to the accident ratio in India and Japan, he said India had 10 million vehicles and the traffic accidents were an alarming 87,000 a year against Japan’s 74 million vehicles on roads and an accident rate of 8,400 a year.

Concern about the mounting deaths on Indian roads, led the car manufacturer to focus on road safety and traffic management, he said.

"While we are requesting the government to set up a National Road Safety Board to improve safety, we believe that Maruti as the market leader, also has a role and so this initiative of setting up the Maruti driving schools across the country."

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