Zooming through city roads doesn’t seem like such a problem for an experienced driver, right? But have you thought of what to do when crisis strikes? Or just how often do you need to take a break during a long journey? Corporate employees are facing many such questions at their organisations now.
It is just not enough to know how to drive a car, but drivers need to know how to remain calm in case of emergencies, and the safety norms to keep in mind while driving.
To impart these skills to their employees who commute to offices on four or two-wheelers, Indian corporates have sent their employees to Maruti Driving Schools (MDS) across India over the last one year.
Maruti Suzuki India has trained around 25,000 people from different organisations in the last 10 months. Companies such as Cairn India, Reliance, Vodafone, Mahindra Satyam, Eli Lilly and Indian Oil have sent their employees to improve their driving skills.
Also, other automobile companies such as Tata Motors and Yamaha Motors India, and Government organisations such as Gurgaon Police, Rajasthan State Road Transport Corporation and World Health Organisation are some examples of organisations which have sent their employees to be trained at MDS.
“The trend has happened since last two years when we started as a pilot project, but now it has picked up with many companies, including multi-national companies ,” Mahesh Rajouria, Chief General Manager, Maruti Suzuki India , told Business Line .
He said most of these companies wanted their employees to be trained in different aspects of driving skills.
MSIL is opening up another 150-200 MDS across India, including Tier-II cities by the end of this year. The company has 275 MDS in the country right now.
Companies such as Eli Lilly have trained around 250 employees last year and will send around 300 people this year, too.
“The idea was to customise skills like defensive riding or driving on road — how to protect yourself from collisions and injuries — as most of our salespersons are on road for at least six hours everyday,” Arpit Mathur, Head of Administration, Eli Lilly, said.
The company bears the cost of training for each employee, he said, adding that all new employees who own a two-wheeler or car go for such trainings as part of their induction programme.
Called a ‘refresher training programme’, it is essentially a classroom-based training programme and the duration of this programme can vary from a half day to a full day that costs Rs 500-1,200 per person, he said.
ronendrasingh.s@thehindu.co.in