Third Mercedes safe roads summit held

Mercedes-Benz recently held the third edition of the Safe Roads summit, where it announced its Vision Zero 2050 initiative — to achieve accident-free driving globally by 2050.

The German carmaker’s new initiative is in line with the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals to reduce road fatalities by half by the end of this decade. Paul Dick, head of Vehicular Safety at Mercedes-Benz, said, “To reinforce our commitment to make roads safer globally, we announced our commitment to the vision of accident-free driving by 2050. This is our holistic and data-driven approach to protect all road users with both active and passive safety systems, and we are committed to making this a reality.”

Mercedes also has a keen interest in reducing road fatalities in India, where even after increased focus on vehicular safety and occupant protection, it still has the highest number of road fatalities.

As per the data shown by Mercedes-Benz at the Safe Roads summit, India has more than 1,50,000 fatalities and more than 4,00,000 injuries from road accidents in 2022 alone. Out of this, more than 60% of the fatalities come from around 5% of the highways in India, and roughly 60% of fatalities are due to over-speeding. The data presented by Mercedes-Benz suggests many occupants still do not use in-car safety features such as the seat-belts; in 2020, more than 15,000 people died due to non-usage of seat belts.

Mercedes-Benz also aims to reduce these figures by instilling awareness in road users through its Safe Roads campaign, which will include exhibits, tech days and media drives. This year’s theme for the summit was ‘Leading Safety with Sustainability at the Core’ and had several exhibits at the summit.