Meet Piyush Tewari: the Messiah to the Road Accident Victims in India

Piyush Tewari could simply continue his secured life as a successful private equity executive. Instead, he was now seen in New Delhi with the female police trainees, holding up a newspaper. They came together for a purpose to save lives after accidents across dangerous streets of New Delhi. These young trainees will be the first ones to reach the scene of a road accident. Their aim is to save every crucial moment after an accident that draws the line between life and death for the critically injured. In India there are still not enough awareness and first aid trainings to rescue a critically injured person in the correct manner. Mishandling an accident victim is common, thereby aggravating injuries further.

The problem is that in our country, no police van is equipped with high end first aid and trauma care facilities such as neck braces. So, Piyush Tewari invented a makeshift neck brace to be done with a newspaper. The newspaper has to be folded and placed under the victim’s neck and pulled by the two ends to provide the required support to the neck while the whole body is shifted from the ground.

Piyush Tewari, now 35 formed a nonprofit organization called SaveLife Foundation in the year 2008 a few months after a tragic road accident in Kanpur took the life of his cousin, who was then only 17 years old. His cousin was hit by a running vehicle and died due to profuse bleeding. He still had the strength to drag himself to the side of the road and ask for help, but none came from anyone present there.

This tragic incident made Tewari look into the deaths due to road accidents in India and he came to know about the shocking truth that Indian roads are considered more dangerous ones in the World even worse than China has more people and cars in streets compared to India. The latest figures from Indian Government suggest that in 2010 the total deaths occurred in India due to road accidents is 134,513 compared to 65,225 for China and 40,000 for US. The most frustrating part is that 50% of those deaths could have been avoided if timely medical intervention was possible. Tewari, thus decided that something has to be done and that also through the aid of institutional infrastructure.

He set out for the mission of saving lives across the streets of India. Training the police staffs is an important part as often they are the first person to reach the scene and offer help. He also started lobbying for imposing strict road-safety legislation. Other objectives include imposing heavy penalties for improper designing of roads and its maintenance that often responsible for numerous accidents. He is also trying to protect the helping individuals in road accidents by Good Samaritan law. Usually, people avoid helping road accident victims into thinking they will be in trouble with the police and medical staffs later in the process of helping the victim.

SaveLife has truly identified a grave problem in our society and also presented the solution. It is now our duty to end this misery. Let us take an oath of helping the next accident victim.

This article was first published in KenFolios - Only interesting stories.