Toyota stresses on wearing seatbelts for safe driving

New Delhi: In a bid to spread awareness on safe driving, Toyota has launched its regional safety campaign for the third time in three years. Captioned as “Be Safety Leaders”, the campaign is directed at encouraging drivers as well as passengers to wear seatbelts while driving, as this proactive step reduces the impact by a big margin in case of any mishap.  Unlike every year, this time the focus is more on changing the general consensus of the public on having seatbelts as a protective equipment. Buckling up the seatbelt before the start of every journey should come as a natural reflex to a user, but a survey conducted in 2014 states otherwise. It says that people gave these top five excuses for not using seatbelts -- presence of airbags, short journey, confidence in one’s own driving skills, discomfort and causing clothes to be wrinkled. Toyota says that wearing seatbelts can massively complement airbags by increasing their effectiveness up to 15 times! Moreover, these belts even reduce life-threatening injuries by up to 50 per cent for front row passengers and 75 per cent for the rear ones. Started in 2014 amid high road accident fatalities, the Toyota safety campaign aims at educating and spreading awareness on safe driving in rapidly motorising South-eastern countries. The first year of the campaign stressed on call-to-action for greater usage of seatbelts while in the second year, the drive continued to focus on seatbelt usage with an aim to empower the public to be safety leaders. Since changing of mindsets isn’t an overnight task, Toyota wishes that another year on this will help spread awareness to a greater extent. “Traffic safety is Toyota’s top priority. We believe in contributing to achieving a society with zero traffic accident fatalities. Through our regional safety awareness campaign, we urge drivers and passengers to belt up to keep themselves and their families safe,” said Hiroyuki Fukui, President, Toyota Motor Asia Pacific, at the campaign inaugural ceremony. Toyota, one of the world’s leading carmakers, has also begun an online campaign to attract youngsters and people from all walks of life. In addition to last year’s activities like the Toyota Seat Selfie App and the “Go Go Buckle Up” game, it is introducing a new campaign video this year. In this video, a child is seen urging his parents to buckle-up for safety. The Japanese automaker hopes that its message “Belt On For Every Journey” will be a game changer and will be able to spread awareness about wearing seatbelts. Sharing his views during the regional safety campaign, N. Raja, director and senior vice president (Sales & Marketing), Toyota Kirloskar Motor, said, “Safety has always been of utmost importance to Toyota. Be it passenger safety or road safety, Toyota has always been in the forefront in creating awareness about the same. We were the first brand in India to standardize dual front SRS airbags across all models and in all grades and this initiative has been very well appreciated by our customers as well as the market alike. This can be further reiterated by the fact that the Toyota Etios was awarded 4-stars in the Global NCAP crash test.” It was the entire range of Etios that received 4-stars including Toyota Etios Liva, Etios sedan and Etios Cross. This campaign would be extensive and will cover all ASEAN nations including, India, Pakistan, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh. Source: cardekho.com