Indigenously-designed road safety vehicle ‘Veera’ showcased at road safety summit

Chief Sec. Meena lauds 'Veera' vehicle for aiding timely treatment of accident victims. City Police Comm. Rathore says 'Veera' can quickly extract & transport victims. IIT-M Dir. Kamakoti says 'Veera' can reduce fatalities by 50%. CoERS Head Balassubramanian talks of '5E model of road safety' with empathy as key component. Summit focuses on challenges in enforcement & trauma care in road crashes.

Highlighting that the Innuyir Kappom Thittam, which focuses on providing timely treatment to accident victims, was launched last year, Chief Secretary Shiv Das Meena said the State government had been taking steps to curb accident rates and prevent fatalities.

He was addressing the various stakeholders after inaugurating the Road Safety Summit 2023, organised by the Centre for Excellence for Road Safety (CoERS), in association with the Greater Chennai Police, at the Indian Institute of Technology-Madras (IIT-M) campus on Wednesday.

Mr. Meena congratulated the team, comprising the engineers of CoERS, Hyundai, and Isuzu and City Police Commissioner Sandeep Rai Rathore, for the development of the response and road safety vehicle ‘Veera’, which will further the goal of saving the lives of accident victims. He also wanted the engineers to improve and perfect in ‘Veera’, wherever possible.

Mr. Rathore said the delay in safely removing victims from crashed vehicles was a huge issue during accidents, and ‘Veera’ had been designed to quickly extract and transport victims. He added that in several instances, fatalities had occurred even when a 108 Ambulance and rescue personnel were at the location because of delayed extrication of victims.

IIT-M Director V. Kamakoti said ‘Veera’, despite facing various engineering constraints, had been designed indigenously and produced with 92 components related to evacuation. He said the induction of ‘Veera’ vehicles in the future would definitely help bring down 50% of the fatalities. He added that more improvements to the vehicle had been planned. 

CoERS Head Venkatesh Balassubramanian, in his welcome address, talked about the ‘5E model of road safety’, where empathy plays an important role among the five components, which include education, enforcement, emergency care, and engineering. The theme of this year’s summit was ‘Challenges in Enforcement and Trauma Care in Road Crashes’.