In 2010, about 1.25 million people died world over from road accidents and in Nigeria which has one of the highest cases in Africa, there were over 6,400 deaths in 2013 alone due to different reasons from bad roads to over speeding.
But for humans to survive road accidents, we would have to be like Graham. Graham is a human prototype developed by the Transport Accident Commission of Australia to show us what our anatomy would need to evolve into for us to withstand road crashes. “Graham has been designed with bodily features that might be present in humans if they had evolved to withstand the forces involved in crashes. Studies have shown that the human body can only cope with impacts at speeds people can reach on their own, unassisted by vehicles.”
On the project website, Graham doesn’t look like us exactly but what he lacks in aesthetics, he makes up in personal safety. He has feet that are unusually bigger and longer than ours that would act as a spring during collision. His skull is considerably bigger which is able to contain more cerebrospinal fluid which protects him during a collision. His visible bigger rib cage can contain more safety features like sacks that act like air bags in a crash.
Now this doesn’t say we have to evolve into Graham someday rather it just means we need more laws to keep us safe even as cars have evolved in mass and speed over time. It’s also important to note that the research used the term car from what I have seen so far and we know that there are other bigger vehicles that cause accidents on our roads and if you’re in Africa like I am, then petrol tankers and Lorries are also a very big cause of accident deaths as well. It’s not exactly clear how Graham would perform in this case. In any case though, it’s all about safety even though it’s still possible that Graham may stand a better chance than humans even upon Collison with bigger vehicles.
But could this study that emphasizes safety bring about a whole new field of study in medicine? We have surgeries that have attempted to reconstruct the human anatomy and maybe this may lead to a new study in that regard. Who knows?
Paul Balo is the founder of TechBooky and a highly skilled wireless communications professional with a strong background in cloud computing, offering extensive experience in designing, implementing, and managing wireless communication systems.
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