Hollard partners with RTMC to promote road safety for truckers

Road fatalities are recognised as a national crisis, with 36 people on average dying on South African roads every day – and 85% of those accidents, many involving trucks, are blamed on driver error. It’s time to act.

This is why Hollard Trucking, a specialist division of the Hollard Insurance Company, is excited to partner with the Road Traffic Management Corporation (RTMC) in road safety education, focusing on truck drivers, in its bid to reduce road accidents and tragic loss of life.

On 13 October 2022, Hollard Trucking joined the RTMC and other corporate and transport industry partners at the Mantsole weighbridge in Limpopo, the largest and busiest weighbridge in the country, to talk to truck drivers about road safety, as well as driver fitness and wellness.

This event, and another at the Somerset West weighbridge in the Western Cape on 27 October, form part of the RTMC’s Transport Month road safety activities.

“As a driver-centric trucking insurer, this vitally important RTMC initiative is a perfect fit for us,” says the head of Hollard Trucking, Wayne Rautenbach.

“We believe firmly that driver training and rewarding, wellness promotion, vehicle tracking and the driver-focused insurance products we offer lead to safer roads for us all. As a matter of fact, our annual Hollard Highway Heroes competition – South Africa’s biggest and richest one for truck drivers – is founded upon excellent and safe driving.

“We’re therefore enthusiastically taking yet another active step in support of road safety, this time in partnership with the RTMC and other like-minded organisations. The more we do together, the greater our impact on achieving safer roads.”

For Hollard Highway Heroes campaign manager Elka du Piesanie, incentivising truck drivers through the competition and the related Hollard Trucking Driver Rewards Card programme, which pays drivers fortnightly cash rewards for driving well, plays a major role in reducing road accidents, and the heartache and economic damage that come with them.

“We’ve found, to our delight, that nearly two-thirds of the thousands of Hollard Highway Heroes participants every year maintain good driving habits out of competition, too. And our rewards card serves to reinforce this further. Fewer accidents translate to fewer losses and, of course, safer roads for everyone,” she says.

“I’m very excited for us to be participating in the RTMC activation at the Mantsole weighbridge, as well as other Transport Month activities, where we’ll be talking road safety with the very people who make up one of our most important stakeholder groups: truck drivers. Hollard Trucking also looks forward to further partnership opportunities with the RTMC, which are currently under discussion.”

“Hollard’s business purpose is called Better Futures, which talks to our shared value ethos, and we are hugely encouraged with the ground-breaking work our trucking team has accomplished to date. Promoting road safety among truck drivers is critically important to creating safer roads for truck drivers, and ultimately all road users,” says Pierre Geyer, Hollard’s Managing Executive.

“The RTMC is doing crucial work this Transport Month around road safety education. As a trucking insurer that is focused on exactly that, it behoves us to support the RTMC in its efforts – and we’re proud to,” says Geyer.