Honoring kind and good drivers

More and more businesses and drivers consider ensuring traffic safety as a responsibility to society. Many transport businesses consider the Golden Steering Wheel award as a guideline to disseminate and promote to all drivers to strive for from the beginning of the year.

After 12 years of organization, the Golden Steering Wheel Award has increasingly spread throughout society. According to Mr. Le Kim Thanh, Vice Chairman of the National Traffic Safety Committee, through the award, many transport businesses and drivers have realized that ensuring traffic safety is a responsibility to society, thereby contributing to reducing traffic accidents.

Mr. Le Kim Thanh.

A guide for businesses and drivers

The Golden Steering Wheel Award has entered its 12th year of organization. How do you evaluate the meaning and influence of the award so far?

After 12 years of launching and organizing the award ceremony, the Golden Steering Wheel Award has attracted the attention and participation of many transport businesses and professional drivers nationwide. This is proven through the development in both scale and number of participating units and drivers each year.

More and more businesses and drivers consider ensuring traffic safety as a responsibility to society. Many transport businesses consider the award as a guideline to disseminate and propagate to all drivers to strive for from the beginning of the year.

Some businesses even organize the Golden Steering Wheel award at the unit level to encourage drivers to actively ensure traffic safety, cultivate qualities and ethics, and have noble acts towards passengers and the community.

For transport companies, they have many opportunities to participate in different awards. But for drivers, up to now, this is still the only national award for them. Is that the reason why the Golden Steering Wheel is increasingly attractive, sir?

Driving a truck is a hard, arduous and dangerous job. During their work, they not only face the risk of traffic violations but also the risk of traffic accidents.

We cannot forget the contributions of thousands of businesses and tens of thousands of drivers who are taking good care of their vehicles day and night, driving safely, and are willing to sacrifice their own interests for their colleagues and other road users. They are the ones who directly implement the goal of "Human life is above all", creating peaceful routes and trips that bring togetherness and happiness to every family and to the whole society.

They don't ask for it, but I think society needs to recognize and honor road transport workers, safe and conscientious drivers.

The Golden Steering Wheel is such an award. Through the effect of the award, the awareness and consciousness of the driver team, transport enterprises in particular and the whole population in general will certainly be raised, contributing to the goal of reducing traffic accidents.

Many new points about the rules

In its 12th year, the award rules have become more stringent, increasing the minimum safe driving distance for drivers. Why was this changed?

Safe kilometers are one of the important criteria. This year, to win the Golden Steering Wheel award, the minimum safe kilometers for drivers of passenger transport vehicles is 40,000km, freight transport vehicles are 50,000km and passenger transport vehicles by bus running on inner-city routes are 25,000km.

Mr. Do Duc Cuong - driver of Cau Buu Bus Enterprise - one of 60 drivers who won the 12th Golden Steering Wheel Award in 2024. Photo: Yen Chi.

Compared to 2023, the minimum safe mileage criterion for passenger car drivers and freight drivers is 20,000km higher, and the minimum safe mileage criterion for inner-city bus drivers is also 10,000km higher than in 2023.

For the Traffic Culture award, drivers also need to achieve a minimum safe mileage of 5,000km higher than last year (reaching 20,000km).

Increasing the number of safe driving kilometers is a more stringent requirement, but it is consistent with the reality that transportation activities are increasingly expanding and developing thanks to the strong investment in traffic infrastructure in recent years.

What about the quantity and structure of the awards this year, sir?

In 2024, the Organizing Committee decided to award 60 individual Golden Steering Wheel prizes to drivers, 30 collective Golden Steering Wheel prizes to transport enterprises and cooperatives; 15 Traffic Culture prizes to collectives and individuals.

Thus, compared to 2023, the number of awards in all categories has increased: Individual awards increased from 50 to 60, collective awards increased from 20 to 30, and Traffic Culture awards increased from 10 to 15. This helps businesses and drivers have more opportunities to access and participate in the awards.

Another new feature of this year’s award is the limitation on the number of applications each business can submit to the organizing committee. Why is there this regulation?

This year's competition, the organizers limit each transport business to submit a maximum of 2 entries including: 1 collective business entry, 1 entry of the best individual, or 2 entries of individuals.

This content was adjusted after receiving comments from businesses and automobile transport associations. Obviously, large transport businesses with wide scope of operations have very good criteria for managing transport activities of the unit and the number of safe driving kilometers of drivers.

But for small businesses, it is difficult to meet all the criteria of the collective award, but their drivers can completely participate and win the award.

This regulation adjustment helps to expand the scope of the tournament, allowing small business drivers to participate.

Transparency in awarding

Entering its 12th year, Golden Steering Wheel has received increasing support from a large number of transport companies and drivers. What do you think has contributed to this success?

I think that building a set of detailed, specific, objective and transparent reward criteria has created trust and support from a large number of businesses and drivers.

Mr. Tran Huu Nam - driver of XE Vietnam Co., Ltd. is one of 60 drivers honored to receive the 12th Golden Steering Wheel Award in 2024.

This year, in the application form, in addition to the driver's individual performance report, the transport enterprise must also extract data from the vehicle's journey monitoring device to prove the number of safe driving kilometers, as well as compliance with continuous driving time and speed on the road.

The appraisal and award consideration are also organized systematically. In addition to the National Traffic Safety Committee, the award evaluation council also includes representatives from the Department of Transport (Ministry of Transport), Vietnam Road Administration, Traffic Police Department (Ministry of Public Security), Vietnam Automobile Transport Association, etc.

The application files of businesses and drivers before being sent to the National Traffic Safety Committee will be verified by the Department of Transport and the Traffic Police Department based on the conditions and criteria in the award rules.

In addition, when the documents are sent to the organizing committee, the Vietnam Road Administration will coordinate to check the data information of the transport enterprise's journey monitoring device and verify the safe driving distance of the participating drivers.

The Traffic Police Department will also assist in assessing and verifying the application information of units and individuals, to see if they have ever violated or caused an accident.

Keep spreading the word

The 2024 Golden Steering Wheel Award ceremony is expected to be held on the evening of December 27. Can you reveal the special features of the award ceremony?

This year's award ceremony will continue to be broadcast live and presented in a theatrical format with reports on touching stories, honoring transportation businesses, safe drivers, caring drivers, and those who sacrifice for the community.

The ceremony promises to create strong emotions not only for drivers and transport businesses but also for people - those who use the services provided by drivers and transport units every day.

The organizers also welcomed the drivers' relatives to attend the award ceremony and share the joy with them, thereby contributing to spreading the meaning of the award and promoting traffic safety.

Through the strong spread of the award, what do you wish for most?

That is to spread the image of transport businesses and drivers who are working day and night to ensure road traffic safety.

Currently, the country has about 1.2 million commercial vehicles and 1.5 million professional drivers operating in hundreds of thousands of enterprises, cooperatives and transport business households. Every day, there are tens of millions of trips and millions of tons of goods are transported safely.

That result has important contributions from businesses and transportation business drivers.

Through the policies of the Party and State, along with many strong actions and social commitments, the work of ensuring road traffic safety and order has had many positive changes in recent times.

However, the traffic accident situation is still complicated, with many particularly serious cases occurring. Every day, about 30 people leave their homes and never return. That means every day, hundreds of families suffer loss and pain.

Traffic accidents also threaten the achievements of economic growth and damage the image of a safe country in the eyes of international friends. Therefore, we need to do more.

Thank you!

The 12th Golden Steering Wheel Awards Ceremony will be held at 8:00 p.m. on December 27, 2024 at the Voice of Vietnam Theater, 58 Quan Su, Hang Bong, Hoan Kiem, Hanoi.

The award aims to recognize and honor drivers, transport businesses, and transport cooperatives that have made many contributions to ensuring traffic safety.

At the 12th Golden Steering Wheel Award, the National Traffic Safety Committee decided to award 30 collectives the Golden Steering Wheel Award for transport enterprises and cooperatives; 60 individuals the Golden Steering Wheel Award for drivers; and 15 individuals and collectives the Traffic Culture Award.

Source: https://www.baogiaothong.vn/giai-thuong-vo-lang-vang-2024-ton-vinh-nhung-bac-tainhan-ai-lai-xe-gioi-192241226223953049.htm