A lifelike interactive sculpture has been created in Australia to demonstrate how susceptible the human body is to the forces involved in a road collision.
‘Graham’ has been produced by the Transport Accident Commission (TAC) in Victoria and is described as ‘the only person designed to survive on our roads’.
Commissioned as part of a road safety campaign, Graham has been designed with bodily features that might be present in humans if they had evolved to withstand the forces involved in crashes.
The sculpture has been designed with: stronger ribs to provide extra protection, strong hoof-like legs to help jump out of dangerous situations, a thicker skull, a neck that combines into the torso and an inflatable chest that acts like an airbag.
Joe Calafiore, TAC chief executive officer, said: “People can survive running at full pace into a wall but when you’re talking about collisions involving vehicles, the speeds are faster, the forces are greater and the chances of survival are much slimmer.
“Cars have evolved a lot faster than humans and Graham helps us understand why we need to improve every aspect of our roads system to protect ourselves from our own mistakes.”
Mr Calafiore said the science of human vulnerability underpinned Victoria’s new ‘Towards Zero’ approach to road trauma reduction.
He said: “We have to accept people will always make mistakes, but modern vehicle safety technology and safe road design can drastically reduce the forces involved when a crash happens, making them more survivable.”
Click here to meet Graham online.
He looks more like the elephant man!
VB
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Wouldn’t like to bump into one of those new humans on the road. It’s bad enough hitting a Basset hound, they just walk away and the cars a write off. Trust the Australians to put a new slant on everything. It isn’t April 1st is it?
R.Craven Blackpool
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