Safe Pune
Pune sees about 320 road crash fatalities annually. This rate is about 8-10 times higher than citis of similar population in the developed countries (in spite of much higher vehicular population and faster speeds!)
The city needs efforts on multiple fronts, and SPTM is working a few campaigns and projects in that direction.
Campaigns / projects
Pune Road Safety Campaign
What is the campaign about
Pune needs a concerted effort that spans across multiple stakeholders: PMC, Traffic Police, RTO, PMPML, Metro, People using Walk-Bus-Cycle, Cars and 2-wheelers, … what have you.
Pune Mayor launches Pune Road Safety Campaign
We therefore urged the then Mayor Smt Mukta Tilak to launch a Pune Road Safety Campaign as the First Citizen of the city. She did that, and our follow up has also resulted in a Pune Road Safety Committee in PMC.
We are now waiting for the next Mayor to be in office to revive the campaign.
Schools: Catch ‘em young
What we are doing
We conduct ‘Safe You, Safe Me!’ road safety sessions that are customized for school students. But we are planning to go big!
This project is for imparting basic road safety training to all school children in Pune, from Std 3-4-5. We plan to train a big pool of collegians to conduct such sessions in schools.
Why are we doing this
What better age to start this training than an age where a child learns to walk along and cross a road independently, and soon starts to cycle to school or to visit friends!
Young children quickly strike a chord with facilitators who are more like their elder siblings, so what better age to conduct such sessions than an age when you are starting to drive independently yourself!
Our objective
We wish to conduct such sessions in about 50 schools in the academic year 2025-26.
In 3 years want to eventually reach a stage where we conduct this session in all schools in Pune every year.
Workplaces
What we are doing
We conduct ‘Safe You, Safe Me!’ workshops for workplaces too (offices, companies, any other). They focus on how to share road with everyone safely and responsibly, and not on ‘how to drive’.
Not only people who drive, but also people who walk, use a bus or a bicycle will benefit from these workshops.
Why we are doing this
Unsafe situations are first born in our brain, well before a road crash happens. Training our brain is the first step towards safer roads.
Format
These workshops can best be conducted in person, in small batches of ~20 attendees. The duration of the workshop is about 3 hrs.