Every year, hundreds of people lose their lives to car accidents — and in New Zealand, approximately 90 of those people could've survived if they'd been wearing a seat belt.
Every year, hundreds of people lose their lives to car accidents — and in New Zealand, approximately 90 of those people could've survived if they'd been wearing a seat belt.
Sweden's Volvo led this initiative, and the world soon followed suit, leading not only to have the option, but also pushing for legislation that would make seatbelt use a mandatory thing.
According to WHO, wearing a seatbelt can reduce the risk of vehicular fatality by 40-50% for front seat passengers, and up to 75% for back seat passengers!
Each photograph features a victim of a motor vehicle accident, and tells their story of violence and survival. The photographs were made possible by PROFX, a company that specializes in SFX make-up.
"Yeah I remember the car crash, man. I remember um... Everything was kind of all upside down. The car was pretty much just wrecked. Yeah, there's 86, 400 seconds in a day, man. And sh** I nearly lost all of them."
"I was T-boned by a truck on my left-hand side, 200 meters from my house. I broke my back in three places — all my ribs on my left hand side, five of them on my right hand side. I spent 10 days in a coma."
"I basically woke up, um, from an induced coma with all my limbs broken. I'd had brain injury, my internal organs had been damaged. Had I not been wearing a seatbelt I would've gone through the windscreen."
"I can remember the sound of the window smashing, the metal crunching. the seatbelt was the first thing I undone, and it was then I realized it pretty much saved my life."
"I remember waking up with sort of that movie moment. Where someone says to you, you know, 'hey, you've been in a car accident.' I didn't really understand the fact that I was seriously injured. Something like wearing your seatbelt stopped me from going through the windscreen."
"I went straight into the oncoming car at 100k head-on. Looking at it, I should've been more messed up than what I was. Honestly really a miracle that I'm alive. The seatbelt is the reason."
"I had to learn how to walk and talk again. My brain had a reaction to being hit. My seatbelt was the only thing protecting me — I'm still here."
"I know for a fact that my brain injury would’ve been a whole lot worse if I wasn’t buckled up. Do the most simple task it might save your life like it saved mine."
"I was speechless when I got through, once I'd seen the photos of it. The main reason I survived was, you know, a seatbelt."
"It was when I was lying in the hospital, the day after a plate and six screws were put into my left arm, after my nose had been stitched back together. How big it really was, and what had really happened. And that I was alive."
"If I wasn't wearing my seatbelt I could've got way more messed up. Way more messed up. Yeah. I am still here to tell the story."
You can watch the interview clips here.