Meet Graham, the only person designed to survive on our roads. Part interactive sculpture, educational tool, Graham shows us how humans would need to change to survive a car crash. Over several months a trauma surgeon and a road safety engineer collaborated with a world-renowned artist using decades of road safety data, medical research and creativity to deliver evolution underpinned by evidence.

During the process key weaknesses in the human body were identified and modified, each change told a new story, showing what happens to our bodies in common crash scenarios.

The goal was to create a visceral experience with a simple, unavoidable message. If you don’t look like Graham then you need to slow down on our roads. To bring this to life, and reveal what lay beneath his skin, we needed to create a digital experience at scale as powerful as the experience of visiting Graham in person.

In July 2016, Graham was introduced to the world via both digital and real world experiences.

Visitors to the experience used Google’s augmented reality technology Tango (a first) to go beneath his skin and better understand his anatomy. Each physiological change is a new source of information showing what happens to your body in a crash.

Those that couldn’t meet Graham in the flesh, social and online comms encouraged people to visit meetgraham.com.au. Like the experience, the site gave users interactive tools to explore him in 360 degrees, both internally and externally.

As Graham was part of the school curriculum, the site also served as a portal for educators to obtain lesson ideas in subjects spanning science, arts and civics.

The interactive exhibition toured regional areas where people are 4 times more likely to be involved in a crash.

Within 24hrs he’d sparked a global road safety conversation. With over 10 million website visits in 5 days, 89% campaign message recall, 1.2 billion globlal impressions.

Our website, meetgraham.com.au was awarded FWA global website of the month by a 200 person industry panel.

In May 2017, Graham was invited to join the World Health Organisation as the international face of road safety to remind us of our vulnerability on the road.

An indication of Grahams cultural impact comes from Google. Search online for ‘Graham’ and the entire first page of web results, and first 15 images, are all of the ‘Meet Graham’ campaign, achieved organically through user action ($0 on SEO).

But the most important influence Graham has is on our future drivers, as he was integrated into the school curriculum and to date over 2000 educational resources have been downloaded from the meetgraham.com.au website.

People understand that car crashes are traumatic, but as soon as you try to explain concepts like ‘kinetic energy’ or ‘impact force’ their eyes glaze over.

So we went back to something every single road user could identify with; the human form.

Throughout the process, decades of road safety data and medical research was interpreted and filtered by our key contributors Trauma Surgeon Christian Kenfield, Road Safety Engineer Dr David Logan and TAC’s own road safety researchers. This data helped identify the key weaknesses in the human body, which were then visualized by our artist, Patricia Piccinni.

Road trauma is a global health issue responsible for millions of fatalities every year. For over 25yrs the Transport Accident Commission in Australia have been successful pioneers of shock advertising campaigns, that have helped drive that road toll down. But in recent times Australians have become desensitised to these tactics and the road toll is on the rise. TAC needed to find a way for people to stop and prioritise safe road behaviour and their own vulnerability again.