Saswad to Get India’s First Road Safety Research and Training Institute on 25 Acres; Automated Vehicle Testing and Driving Test Tracks Planned

Pune, 3rd November 2026: Maharashtra plans to set up what it describes as India’s first Road Safety Research and Training Institute on a 25-acre site at Saswad in Purandar taluka, Transport Minister Pratap Sarnaik said after inspecting the site and reviewing the project.

The campus will also house an Automated Testing Station (ATS) for vehicles and an Automated Driving Testing Track (ADTT), Sarnaik said. “Merely enforcing traffic rules is not enough to reduce road accidents,” he said. “Modern technology, trained manpower and a scientific approach are equally essential.”

What the Saswad campus will have

• Road safety institute: training for Motor Vehicles Department officers and staff on new technology, changes in motor vehicle law, road safety and traffic management.
• Automated Testing Station: sensors and cameras to check brakes, suspension, lights and emissions, cutting the time taken for vehicle fitness checks.
• Automated Driving Testing Track: figure-eight and H-shaped tracks, uphill and downhill sections and curves, with video analytics used to judge driving skills.

The cost, partners and completion timeline have not been announced yet.

What it could mean for Pune drivers

Automated test tracks take much of the human judgement out of a driving test, since cameras record whether a candidate crosses lines, stalls on a slope or misses a turn. For fitness certificates, automated stations can test commercial vehicles faster than manual inspections. Both could ease the long waits at Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad RTOs once running, though no date has been given.

Saswad, about 30 km from Pune city, has space for the large tracks such a campus needs. The Pune RTO has been stepping up checks too; read how it checked 929 buses before Diwali.

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