10 Brutal Truths About Road Safety Dhoni Made Me Face

Some conversations leave you with more questions than answers. This was one of them.

We met MS Dhoni recently—our investor, ex-brand ambassador, and someone who has built his life around discipline, precision, and the power of making the right decisions at the right time. What started as a casual chat turned into a 1.5-hour deep dive into something that should concern every single one of us—road safety. What a lot of people don’t know about Dhoni is he actually enjoys going on long drives and is an avid biker too.

Most of what we do at CARS24 circles around our vision of ‘better drives, better lives’ and in this memorable conversation, it found resonance too. These are the 10 lessons that have stayed with me, the ones that made me rethink everything we take for granted on the road.

1. The problem isn’t just bad driving. It’s that we don’t even recognise what bad driving is.

In India, reckless driving isn’t seen as reckless. It’s seen as a skill. Swerving through gaps, squeezing into spaces that don’t exist, overtaking without checking, these aren’t exceptions, they’re the norm. The real danger isn’t just that people drive badly, it’s that they think they’re driving well.

2. Most people don’t fear the consequences—until they become one.

Ask someone why they don’t wear a helmet, and the answer will rarely be about safety. It’s about how they can “manage” the cops, or how they’re “just going nearby.” Seatbelts? A formality until the highway starts. But the physics of an accident doesn't care how short your trip was. What saves lives isn’t just infrastructure or enforcement, it is the realization that nothing is worth the risk.

3. The roads don’t just need rules. They need awareness.

We are conditioned to follow rules only when there’s a threat of punishment. But road safety isn’t about fines, it’s about understanding risk. People don’t stop at red lights because they think they won’t get caught. But what if they saw it as protecting their own life instead? That shift from obeying rules to understanding them is what real change looks like.

4. We have generations of drivers who were never taught to think beyond themselves.

In other countries, defensive driving is a mindset—anticipating what others might do, preparing for mistakes that aren’t even yours. In India, we learn how to control a car, but not how to read a road. We drive for ourselves, not with others in mind. And that’s exactly why every journey feels like a battle instead of a shared space.

5. Every road crash is a systems failure, not just an individual mistake.

A speeding driver is dangerous. But so is a road designed with blind spots. So is a traffic signal that has been broken for weeks. So is a policy that mandates helmets but doesn’t regulate their quality. Crashes don’t just happen because of one bad decision—they happen because, at every level, there are gaps waiting to catch someone off guard.

6. Road safety should be treated like a public health issue.

We talk about vaccines, pollution, and clean drinking water as public health issues. But road crashes take lives on a massive scale every single year. Why isn’t this treated with the same urgency? Why don’t we see national awareness campaigns, systematic safety drills, or educational reforms around it? The scale of the problem demands more than just awareness days and social media posts.

7. If you think road safety isn’t your problem, wait until it is.

The worst part about road crashes is how random they are. You can be the safest driver and still find yourself in danger because someone else was reckless. That’s the truth about roads—you aren’t just responsible for yourself, you are responsible for everyone around you. And they are responsible for you.

8. The youth will determine how safe our roads will be in the next 20 years.

Dhoni spoke about how the younger generation needs to take ownership. They are the next drivers, the next policymakers, the next enforcers. If they grow up believing traffic laws are just suggestions, they will pass that mindset down. But if they demand change, if they build systems that prioritise safety, they will be the ones who redefine what’s normal.

9. You will never see the full impact of the choices you make—but that doesn’t mean the impact isn’t there.

Slow down at an intersection, and you might have just avoided a crash. Brake for a pedestrian, and you might have saved a life that wasn’t even meant to be in danger. You won’t always know the ripple effect of your actions. But the absence of an accident is just as powerful as the presence of one.

10. Saving a life doesn’t always look heroic. Sometimes, it looks like nothing happened at all.

There’s no applause for wearing a seatbelt, no recognition for stopping at a red light, no headlines for checking your mirrors before switching lanes. But these are the things that keep people safe. And even if you never see it, even if no one thanks you for it, every good decision on the road makes a difference.

The Road Ahead

What stuck with me most was this: change takes time. It took years for cricket to evolve, for systems to get better, for teams to build discipline. Road safety is no different. We won’t see the results immediately. But that’s not a reason to stop, it’s the reason to start.