Alumni Spotlight: Prerana Arora, India

Alumni Spotlight

Prerana trains 5000 professionals and volunteers across India and counting .

2016 DRSC alumna Prerana Arora is a road safety researcher and practitioner with a PhD in Road Safety Management. She is a founding member and Director of the Bharat Association of Road Safety Volunteers, established in February 2026 to integrate the work of government bodies, NGOs, corporates, and experts into a unified platform for implementing the Safe System Approach across India.

“Since completing the DRSC course, I have strengthened my ability to lead system-level road safety initiatives, train professionals, and advocate for safer mobility systems that protect lives and support sustainable development.”

Prerana’s commitment to road safety stems from her personal involvement in a road crash while riding a two-wheeler in Jaipur in 2000. Wearing a helmet, in compliance with local regulations at the time, saved her life and showed her firsthand that simple, evidence-based measures can prevent death and serious injury. She went on to complete a PhD in Road Safety Management, specialising in post-crash response, before attending DRSC in 2016 to build on her technical foundation with practical tools for institutional strengthening and system-level programme design.

In many Indian cities, high vehicle speeds in urban and school zones, low helmet compliance, and inadequate pedestrian infrastructure significantly increase the risk of road traffic injuries and fatalities. 

Prerana leads initiatives targeted precisely at these issues, from helmet awareness campaigns to urban design for pedestrians and advocating for 25km/h school zones. In each of these projects, Prerana has applied the learnings from Delft, using her knowledge to develop wider change, working with society, government and private sector to transition toward the Safe System Approach. 

Alongside this, Prerana has trained more than 5,000 individuals, including police officers, government officials, engineers, and volunteers – applying and passing on many of the principles she encountered at DRSC. She has also served as a mentor on DRSC’s Train-the-Trainer programme, bringing her experience of implementing road safety in the Indian context to guide fellow alumni from South Asia, part of DRSC’s broader approach to ensuring its learning is grounded in local realities.

Through the establishment of the Bharat Association of Road Safety Volunteers, Prerana aims to structure and scale this work further by bringing together the efforts of government bodies, NGOs, corporates, and individual experts under a single platform to accelerate implementation of the Safe System Approach across India.

Prerana credits DRSC with enabling her shift from isolated technical interventions to cross-sectoral, system-level programmes, an approach she continues to apply and share across her work in India.