Project Graham: what would a human bred to survive car crashes look like?
Perhaps this comes from living in London my entire life and thus, never really needing to learn to drive, but how does anyone get over the sheer terror that is driving a car?!
Rationally, I know that I’m the problem here – enough people drive in the world to put me in the minority who just need to get a hold of themselves. Still, though, the idea of hurtling through packed urban areas filled with pedestrians and cyclists fills me with a dread that I could probably turn into a Lovecraftian novel in a pinch. That’s long before I consider the danger it would put me in as a driver, which is weird, as I actually have been in a car crash before.
I just can’t help but think that if we were meant to pilot large metal boxes surging all over the place at speeds that can kill with ease, we’d look a lot different than we do today. I’m not the first person to think this way, either. In fact, an Australian road safety campaign got their first. What’s more, they actually went ahead and imagined what said person would look like if, biologically, they were built to survive the physical trauma of an average car crash.
It’s an inspired campaign, one put forth by the Transport Accident Commission of Victoria, Australia. They commissioned the Melbourne-based artist Patricia Piccinini to collaborate with the trauma surgeon Dr Christian Kenfield and Dr David Logan, a crash investigation expert at Monash University Accident Research Centre. Together, they completely reimagined the human body to create a poor soul they called Graham.
I’m sure he’s lovely underneath it all, but Graham looks like a sin against nature.
How would Graham survive a car crash?
Looking for all the world like the unholy lovechild of Wayne Rooney and a Sontaran, it’s difficult to say whether one part of Graham stands out over the rest of him for sheer horror. However, the eye is probably drawn first to his head. The team behind Graham built his skull to resemble a helmet, with a large, drooping brow that absorbs the head trauma that pretty much all car crashes cause. The face is shrunken inside it, minimising any damage to vulnerable areas like the eyes and nose. Although in Graham’s case, he doesn’t really have a nose, so that won’t be a worry for him.
The more you look, the worse it gets. A bulky, reinforced rib cage gives him the mother of all barrel-chests, one that includes sacs of air that act as inbuilt airbags. His knees are built to move in all directions, so nothing breaks in the event of a crash.
There’s a second ankle joint halfway up the calf muscle that gives Graham an extra spring to his cursed step if he ever needs to jump out of a burning car. His skin has the thickness of your average carpet to protect against fragments of glass or contact with the road.
Graham is an eyesore, and that’s entirely the point. That if we don’t drive carefully, Graham is the only kind of person who would survive in that kind of world. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but one that we must if we want to keep living in a world as car-dominated as the one we live in today.
Personally, I’ll stick with trains, ta.