Piyush Tewari seeks to reduce deaths on India’s dangerous roads

Photos: courtesy SaveLIFE Foundation

November 12, 2022

In September, Cyrus Mistry and a fellow passenger were killed after their Mercedes Benz hit a divider on the road and crashed near Mumbai. Mistry, 54, was the billionaire former chairman as well as a major shareholder of Mumbai-based Tata Sons, which runs a group of businesses, ranging from salt to software, with $130 billion in revenues in 2021.

Mistry’s death brought global attention to accidents on roads in India, which are among the deadliest in the world. The country has 1% of the world’s vehicles but accounts for more than a tenth of road crash deaths aroiund the globe.

Every day more than 400 people are killed in road accidents. In 2021, there were more than 155,000 fatalities from road accidents, up about 60% since 2005. More than 370,000 were also injured in 2021. The total number of fatalities is likely higher since the data on those injured, who die a day or more after an accident, are recorded in a separate official document.     

Nearly 60% of the fatalities are due to speeding drivers and more than a quarter due to dangerous driving. Also, half of all deaths from road accidents in India can be prevented if those injured receive timely medical care from the police and public, notes Piyush Tewari founder of the New Delhi-based SaveLIFE Foundation (SLF).

In 2008, Tewari, 42 years old, teamed up with a mentor and friend Krishen Mehta to set up SLF. This was after one of Tewari’s young cousins died in a road accident. He was on his way back home “from school when he was hit by a vehicle…he lay on the road for an extremely long period of time before getting any assistance. He eventually passed away at the scene,” Tewari told the newsletter of the Lakshmi Mittal South Asian Institute at Harvard University.

"Initially I didn't quit my job because road safety attracted hardly any funding," Tewari told Rediff.com. His income and donations from family members funded SLF’s first three years of operation.

SLF focused on training police personnel since they are the first responders to an accident in India. Tewari teamed up with the trauma center at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Delhi, to train the police in basic trauma care skills.

In 2009, SLF’s work got attention from police and government officials in Delhi after an accident. A police team, while transporting an injured motorcyclist in a van to the AIIMS trauma center, were able to revive him by performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation and bleeding control.

In 2016, after much lobbying by SLF, the Supreme Court of India passed the Good Samaritan Law which provides legal protection to the public who try to help road crash victims. This helps insulate people who help road crash victims, without fearing police questioning, intimidation and harassment by the police, detention at hospitals and court appearances. The protections to the public under the law though are still not widely understood.   

From 2016 to 2019, SLF conducted investigations of crashes along the Mumbai-Pune Expressway, a 60-mile road, one of the deadliest in India. It identified 15 types of engineering errors, repeated 2,150 times: exposed concrete structures; gaps in the median; and overgrown bushes at sharp turns. Most of the errors were fixed. Also, the ambulance response time was sharply reduced from 45 minutes by placing ambulances near vulnerable stretches. As a result, deaths on the road fell from 151 in 2016 to 86 in 2019.

Tewari found other factors contributing to the rise in road deaths: driving schools with no accreditation or registration training drivers while ignoring road safety instructions; major defects in road engineering; trucks carrying protruding rods–a practice that was killing close to 10,000 people every year in rear-end collisions; and no laws about safety on school buses besides requiring a display of a school’s phone number.

In 2019, Tewari and his team of lawyers, policy researchers, engineers and urban designers helped shape the government of India’s Motor Vehicles (Amendment) Act, 2019. The new law increased the penalty for driving errors; made it mandatory for children to wear seat belts and helmets; holds engineers and road-building contractors accountable for faulty road construction; seeks to clean up the process to secure a driver’s license; and uses electronic cameras to enforce traffic rules to deter police from accepting bribes.

Since 2021, Tewari has been a member of the Indian Government’s National Road Safety Council. He is on the faculty of the Ashoka University, near Delhi.

Earlier, from 2006 to 2011, Tewari led the India operations of Calibrated Healthcare, a U.S. based private equity fund. From 2003 to 2006, he was at the India Brand Equity Fund, an initiative of the Prime Minister to attract investments to the country. 

Tewari holds a Master’s degree in Public Administration from Harvard University, 2017, and a Bachelor’s degree in Information Technology from Delhi University, 2003. He graduated from the Naval Public School in 1998. His co-founder Mehta was a former tax partner at PwC, who worked in New York, London and Tokyo.

SLF operates in 12 states and union territories. More than 15,000 policemen have been trained on assisting accident victims. Its operations now include an accident prevention training program for high-risk commercial drivers. SLF corporate partners include Mahindra & Mahindra, Vodafone India, Renault India, and DHL Express (India).

Since 2021, SLF is also seeking to implement road safety measures similar to those it helped with on the Mumbai Pune Expressway. It is working with the central and state governments on safety and trauma care issues at the 15 most dangerous highways in India, with the goal of establishing Zero Fatality Corridors. These roads account for 85% of all road crash fatalities.

Tewari’s goal is to expand road safety measures to all the states in India as well as implement it around the globe, especially in Latin American and other Asian countries. Speaking of his message to social entrepreneurs, Tewari told the Mittal newsletter, “Never fear not finding support; as you move along your journey, more people will join you and your tribe will only grow into a bigger, better force.”

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