Shailesh Shetye is an MBA by education who married his college sweetheart Kshama Chopra in 2005. After 12 years of being together, Shailesh lost Kshama in a road accident when an overspeeding BMW rammed into the car they were travelling in. Since this incident in 2010, Shailesh has been bravely fighting to get justice for Kshama and his family. He has also actively taken up the cause of road safety and is working with various organizations for the same.
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Dr Kamaljeet Soi has been working in the field of road safety for 16 years. A former member of the Road Safety Council in Punjab, Dr Soi is also the President of Raahat, an organization that works on road safety issues. He is an alumnus of Hasselt University in Belgium, SWOV Institute for Road Safety Research and Delft University of Technology, Netherlands. He has investigated the school bus accident in Nakodar, Punjab where 14 children lost their lives due to the unfit condition of the bus and rash, negligent driving and is striving to get justice for their families.
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| Website: www.raahatcommunityfoundation.com
Apneet Bakshi is a wedding consultant based in Delhi. In 2013, her husband Arjun Bakshi was killed in a road accident involving sariyas or rods that were protruding six feet outside the truck carrying them. She lives with her three-and-a-half-year-old daughter Myrra and is determined to secure justice for her husband and her family.
Jagdamba Mishra, Vikki Bakoriya, Balbir Singh, Ashok Walve and Vishwanath Nisad are truck drivers hailing from Delhi and Nagpur who have travelled across the country and faced tremendous hardships due to corruption and apathy towards the conditions in which truckers in India work. Their struggle for a dignified livelihood continues.
Bhim Wadhwa is President of All India Motor Transport Congress, that has represented over 75,00,000 truckers and 5,00,000 private bus operators for over 75 years. He is also former president of the Delhi Transport Association.
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Satish Sahasrabudhe is the Additional Commissioner of Transport, Maharashtra. His responsibilities include overall supervision of the working of the department, including road safety. He was also closely associated with measures taken towards reducing pollution from automobiles and has received a fellowship from the Fulbright-Nehru Environmental Leadership Program.
Dr Rohit Baluja is the Founder and President of the Institute of Road Traffic Education, an organization that researches and works towards road safety, personnel training and traffic management. Dr Baluja holds a Ph.D in Civil Engineering from the University of Birmingham, U.K., where he is also a visiting lecturer. Today, he represents India at the Commission for Global Road Safety and is also a member of the United Nations Road Safety Collaboration.
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| Website: www.irte.com
David Ward is Secretary General of the Global New Car Assessment Programme (Global NCAP), a UK-based philanthropy promoting consumer information on automobile safety. Mr Ward has worked in the field of road safety for over 18 years and has played a leading role in the establishment of the UN Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011–2020.
Website: www.globalncap.org
Kanhaiyalal Verma is a resident of Thikariya village in Rajasthan. In 2013, his wife and 8-month-old daughter lost their lives when a speeding truck hit his motorbike in the Ghat ki Guni tunnel in Jaipur city. Their lives could have been saved if not for extreme public apathy. CCTV footages showed that several vehicles passed by but no one stopped to help them in spite of repeated shouts and pleas for help.
Piyush Tewari is the Founder of SaveLIFE Foundation that works towards the prevention of road fatalities, by enabling immediate first aid for injured victims through police personnel and citizen volunteers. Once the India Director of a U.S.-based private equity firm, the course of Mr Tewari’s life changed when he lost his 16-year-old cousin in a road accident. Since then, he has championed various interventions that are helping to save many lives each year. For his work, Piyush has been conferred with the prestigious Ashoka Fellowship, Echoing Green Fellowship and the Rolex Award for Enterprise.
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| Website: www.savelifefoundation.org
Prashant, Sandeep and Dheeraj are 16-year-old students who saved the life of Devendar Dubey, a road accident victim, in Delhi, in early 2014. After no vehicles stopped to help, the boys hoisted Mr Dubey in an autorickshaw and manually pushed him to the nearest hospital - an act that saved his life. Prashant, Sandeep and Dheeraj were felicitated by SaveLIFE Foundation’s Jeevan Rakshak Award that recognizes such extraordinary courage, skill and presence of mind.