Equipment driving skill development is an ongoing activity at construction sites and transport hubs. Helekar?s Defensive Driving Advisors specialises in providing onsite training to operators, drivers, technicians and conducting train the trainer programmes.

Most customers shy away from classroom training conducted by various training agencies. However, they find onsite training beneficial to the organisation because the knowledge from training is imparted directly to the concerned operators and drivers followed by individual skill evaluation and certification. Helekar?s has adequately met this requirement of the industry and gained pan India acceptance.

Journey so far
Almost 20 years back, four industry professionals coming from a diverse background, decided to step out of their respective jobs and aligned together to form Helekar?s Defensive Driving Advisors, based at Mumbai with a common objective of developing driving skills in the country. They began organising training programmes on Defensive Driving for various categories of drivers, such as car, bus, trucks, hazardous goods tankers, airport ramp safety, two/three wheelers, new learners, executives as well as various types of heavy earthmoving equipment operators of various organisations at their locations.

In last 20 years, Helekar?s has conducted more than 8,500 programmes all over India and trained more than 1,47,000 personals. Big conglomerates like Shell, Bharat shell, HPCL, BPCL, Castrol, IOC, L&T, Reliance, HCC, Sandoz, Novartis, Ambuja Cement, etc are regular clients of Helekar?s where they have trained their heavy, light duty drivers and assessed them for their driving habits. They also conduct programmes for RTO offices, traffic departments, police departments, National Safety Council, and Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers.

?Our mission and aim is to reduce the rate of accidents and fatalities by spreading the awareness of safe driving, educating drivers about the scientific way of driving, improving driving habits etc,? says Vinayak Joshi, Director, Helekar?s. He adds, ?Last year there there were 1,75, 000 reported fatal accidents in India, making it the most accident prone country in the world for the fourth consecutive year. As such they have a long way to go.?

Range of training services and programmes
Helekar?s provides training in multi-disciplines. Their prime objective is to provide defensive driving classroom training, assessment of the participants, refresher course, driving habits check, develop driving confidence conduct surprise checks and even make safety films for their clients? use. They also add value by disseminating knowledge on Basic principal and unseen forces like center of gravity, momentum, centrifugal force etc and its effects on vehicle; assessing operator behaviour and attitude; equipment upkeep, effects of adverse light and weather conditions, motivation and such other important aspects.

Faculty and training facilities
Primary training faculty comprises P N Helekar, Principal; S Biwalkar, S Chakravarty and Vinayak Joshi, Director. Additional faculty is organised by inducting trained trainers for specific customer locations, from time to time. In most cases the clients provide training class rooms, equipment and logistics at their sites at their own cost.

Training range and courses

• Provide classroom training for scientific way of driving
• Improve driving habits
• Consultants for new vehicle purchase
• Consultants for old vehicle checks
• Vehicle checks
• Teaching through audio-video method
• Teaching through practical
• Driving audits/assessments of all type of vehicle
• Vehicle driving confidence
• Earthmoving vehicle training and assessments
• Hazardous goods vehicle driver training programmes
• RAMP - Airport safety driving training programmes
• Surprise checks
• School bus drivers training
• Honkless, ie, Hornless driving practical training
• Train the trainers programme for motor training schools and for many organisations
• Technical knowledge
• Chauffeurs training
• Awareness programmes for school children