The following is an editorial in the AFL Victoria Record this weekend:
Have you met ‘Graham’? He is the Transport Accident Commission’s (TAC) newest recruit in road safety.
The TAC plays a vital role in campaigns relating to staying safe on our roads, which is important to all of us.
In a shift from its traditional road safety campaigns, the TAC has collaborated with a leading trauma surgeon, a crash investigation expert and a world-renowned Melbourne artist to produce Graham, an interactive lifelike sculpture showing what we might look like if we could survive a crash.
While seeing Graham for the first time can be confronting, it highlights how susceptible the human body is to the forces involved in transport accidents.
Studies have shown that the human body can only cope with impacts at speeds people can reach on their own, unassisted by vehicles, so Graham has been designed with bodily features that might be present in humans if they had evolved to withstand the forces involved in crashes.
Graham will be on show at the State Library of Victoria until August 8, before going on a roadshow across Victoria. I encourage everyone to support the work of the TAC by finding out more about Graham at meetgraham.com.au and you can share your experience meeting Graham using #meetgraham on social media.
This new campaign is part of the TAC's Towards Zero approach, with its aim for zero deaths and serious injuries on our roads. Along with investments in road infrastructure and increased vehicle safety, understanding our own vulnerability will help us be safer road users.
The change comes as we celebrate 25 years of AFL Victoria’s TAC Cup competition, and over the next few weeks we will start to release details of a special top 25 AFL players from the TAC Cup competition.
We look forward to celebrating a who’s who of elite AFL players, as it will be a fascinating walk down memory lane, recapping the depth of talent our U18 program has developed.
Last Modified on 29/07/2016 14:20