Occupational therapist, Caroline Rule, is the runner-up for the 2022 Thami Radebe Road Heroes Award. Presented by the Road Ethics Project, a non-profit organisation dedicated to ethical road use, the Award honours individuals who have made a great impact in promoting road safety. The inaugural award was presented to Ari Seirlis – former QASA COO and current QASA board member.
This year, the award was presented to advocate Johan Jonck who is the founder of Arrive Alive – a road safety information portal to enhance road safety. Caroline Rule was runner up for her work in raising awareness of the right to mobility for people with disability and promoting road safety in her approach to this.
In announcing the winners, the Road Ethics Project described Caroline has having “a passionate desire to ensure people with disabilities can drive safely, and that those who are unsafe to drive will not do so”. Through her private practice, Rolling Rehab, Caroline assesses whether people with disabilities are fit to drive, but also assists them with getting back behind the wheel through education, vehicle adaptation assessments, workshops and more.
“I was very surprised to even be nominated for the award as I was nominated by a therapist who I hardly know; and then, to be awarded the runner-up position was an even bigger surprise,” Caroline says.
“I don’t really see my work as being award-winning work. I feel as if I am just plodding along doing a little bit every day; trying to find solutions for people with disabilities who want to drive. But, this has made me stop and evaluate what I have achieved. It is great to see that I’m making a difference and it is exciting for me that other people have noticed.”
She concludes: “A lot of the work that I have done has been alongside QASA, both with the Driving Ambitions project as well as the www.auto-mobility.co.za website, which grew out of Rolling Inspiration. I hope to continue developing more adaptive driving schools around South Africa as there are still very few at the moment.”
Lee Randall, an occupation therapist and a founding member of the Road Ethics Project, says about the Award: “Nominations are reviewed by members of an evaluation panel using an online system and nominees are statistically ranked.
“While this year we had a stand-out winner in Advocate Johann Jonck, the visionary behind Arrive Alive, we were also delighted to have a clear runner-up in Caroline Rule, a second-time nominee,” she adds.
Lee continues to explain the motivation behind the Award: “The motivation for the Thami Radebe Road Heroes Award (named after our late co-founder) is the Road Ethics Project’s conviction that an individual who has an ethical concern about road crashes and the need for safe mobility, and the energy to act on that in one way or another, can make a difference.
“We wanted to recognise as a hero someone from any walk of life who has dedicated visible effort to the road safety cause, assisted people affected by road crashes and/or shown leadership to reduce road traffic injuries, disabilities and deaths,” she concludes.
