Shell Malaysia’s road safety programme for tertiary students, #ShellSelamatSampai Varsity Challenge, which empowers youth to critically think and use science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) to solve issues pertinent to road safety, was awarded the Prince Michael International Road Safety Award recently. The Prince Michael International Road Safety Awards recognises outstanding achievement and innovation in the UK and across the world since 1987.

Shell Malaysia embarked on road safety advocacy in 1957, refreshed its programme, #ShellSelamatSampai in 2016 and introduced the Varsity Challenge in 2017. As part of the programme’s requirement, student teams must conduct baseline studies on the current road safety issues in the country to strengthen their proposition before creating an innovative solution to address the road safety issues.

Shell Varsity Challenge creates a platform for youth to actively participate in mitigating road safety issues within their universities and surrounding communities. It aims to create road safety innovation projects that would contribute towards achieving zero road related crashes.

The judges who reviewed Shell Malaysia’s winning initiative said, ‘The innovative approaches taken to attract students to take part and the subsequent level of engagement are impressive’.

Over the last three years, the Shell Varsity Challenge has gained participation from 25 universities throughout Malaysia, with 60 positively impacted road safety innovation project prototypes being introduced. One of the prototypes is an innovation called ‘Change Lane Alert Assist’ to alert other drivers against potential head-on collisions. It was successfully built, tested and installed onto one of the participating university team’s busses. The device provided an additional 30 percent improvement to the driver’s front view visibility and the university recorded a 10 percent reduction in road accidents within campus.