Women in Trucking Australia (WiTA) has taken out one of South Australia’s most coveted awards – the Jones, Harley Toole Community Road Safety Award at the recent Community Achievement Awards in Adelaide.
With over 200 nominations, WiTA won the accolade from a strong field of community contributors.
The winners were announced last month at an online presentation event hosted by Mike Smithson – Chief Political Reporter – 7News.
Established by female truckies for female truckies, WiTA’s focus is to provide a networking platform where women can help each other tackle the challenges they face as drivers, to work collaboratively with stakeholders to reduce heavy vehicle driver gender disparity, to develop a grow-our-own driver culture and – as a flow-on – deliver greater numbers of safety focused, professionally trained female truckies onto the nation’s roads.
The organisation is also committed to addressing the enormous gap that exists in small vehicle driver education when it comes to sharing the roads safely with heavy vehicles.
In 2019 WiTA successfully applied for Commonwealth funding through the NHVR’s Round 4 National Heavy Vehicle Safety Initiative and produced a confronting FreeTV road safety campaign demonstrating just how quickly poor on-road decisions around heavy vehicles can flip the ‘family, friends and fun’ coin to ‘fear, fatalities and funerals’.
The first of its kind in the world, the campaign – fronted by three South Australian female road train drivers – airs nationally during peak holiday periods.
Given its resounding success, WiTA was again awarded Commonwealth funding mid 2020 through the NHVRs Round 5 Heavy Vehicle Safety Initiative to produce a second heavy vehicle road safety advertising campaign – which will air mid-2021.
CEO Lyndal Denny said this prestigious award has sent a positive ripple effect through the organisation’s entire team of volunteers and members – positioning it well to go into pre-production of its ‘Welcome to Our World’ FreeTV advertising campaign mid-2021.