Apollo Tyres joins TyreSafe

Vredestein UK managing director Stuart Jackson also serves as the chairman of TyreSafe, so it is safe to say he is pleased to welcome the safety organisation’s latest member – Vredestein’s parent company Apollo Tyres.

Upon Apollo joining the TyreSafe ranks, Jackson said: “TyreSafe continues to grow from strength to strength. However, more than the number of members, it’s the high level of involvement and participation from these members that’s important for us. Since Apollo has been actively engaged in safe drive initiatives – promoting safety on the roads in the Asian region, their association with TyreSafe would result in both organisations using each other’s expertise towards the cause of safety on the roads in the UK.”

Since its inception in 2006, TyreSafe’s activities have helped reduce the number of people killed or seriously injured in tyre related incidents by 38 per cent. However, each year more than 1,200 people in the UK still lose their lives or get injured in accidents due to the illegal, defective or under-inflated tyres.

Commenting on this association, Rob Oudshoorn, CEO, European Operations, Apollo Tyres Ltd said, “at Apollo, we have been working on tyre-related customer safety initiatives for many years now and given TyreSafe’s success in the UK, it is an ideal partner to learn from and take our own safety initiatives to the next level, to the multiple markets we are present in, which does not have organisations like TyreSafe.”

Apollo Tyres has been working on road safety through its Safe Drive initiative since 2002, targeting both passenger and commercial vehicle customers. Last year, Apollo Tyres conducted more than 50 Safe Drive camps across the Asian region on highways and fuel stations for passenger vehicle customers; and, a similar number of camps were conducted in corporates and residential locations. During one of the week-long campaigns for commercial vehicles in India, Apollo’s technical team inspected nearly 5,000 commercial vehicle tyres for inflation pressure, tread wear and valve caps; and found more than 40 per cent of the tyres had incorrect inflation pressure.

The Safe Drive campaign from Apollo Tyres has been recognised and awarded by the International Institute of Road Traffic Education, UK, and is regularly undertaken in India, United Arab Emirates, Iran, Turkmenistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.