#BeTheBetterGuy - A Road Safety Initiative

The, #BeTheBetterGuy, road safety initiative has been an initiative from Hyundai to instil good manners within drivers when they are on the road. It intends to change certain behaviour by correction and education to ensure a more safe and respectful ambience on the road for vehicle users and pedestrians alike. In the past there are many aspects which this campaign has touched upon, in order to work towards building awareness. Few of them are: Drunk Driving, Following Traffic Signals, Over speeding, Wearing Seatbelts, Unnecessary honking leading to noise pollution, and other etiquettes you should follow while on the road to be the better person and citizen.

To spread this message we at Overdrive thought of doing a few on ground tests to strongly drive home the message of being the better guy. We are looking at two critical aspects today, one of them was drunk driving, and the other was the incessant honking on traffic stricken roads which leads to aggressive noise pollution.

We are all aware of the hazards of driving under the influence of alcohol, but to a person who is sober, it is hard to understand what alcohol does to the senses. To understand this and educate our audience of the effects of alcohol on the human senses, we got ourselves a pair of goggles which simulates the visual impairment that happens when one is under the influence of alcohol.

We conducted this experiment in our office by telling people to walk in a straight line wearing those goggles. As we had expected the goggles ensued in a lot of hilarity, although what seemed funny opened our eyes to the truth and compelled us to #BeTheBetterGuy for the collective good of all. We at Overdrive strictly oppose driving under the influence and hence appeal to all to behave responsibly and avoid drunk driving at all costs.

We love being in the mountains and explore them with cars, but that's not where we live do we? Living in a metropolitan city like Mumbai has its huge perks, but it also does come with its cons. The noise the 2.1 crore population generates is significant and certainly not favourable. But a big city also should have its quieter zones which include hospitals and schools for obvious reasons.

So our second ground test led us to visit a few hospitals and the surrounding areas to know what the decibel level is like with a decibel meter. As per the extant legal regulations, Hospitals Schools and Courts are silent zones where the Sound Pressure Level (SPL) should be below 50 decibels, but to our utter dismay hospitals and schools which are right beside the main road suffer from surrounding noise levels of more than 80 to 100 decibels to start with, and this cannot be supportive towards the patients, medical personnel or even students and teachers. We must learn to #BeTheBetterGuy.

These ground tests opened our eyes and compels us to spread the word to #BeTheBetterGuy and behave, don't drink and drive and please don't honk incessantly as it won't unclog the congestion on the road, rather would make lives of the people around you more miserable nothing else. So the next time you are on the road make sure you remember to #BeTheBetterGuy , as the change should start with you.