Car Crash Survivors Are Shown With Brutal Seatbelt Bruises For New Zealand Transport Campaign

Shocking portraits of the searing bruises that seatbelts can leave behind after a crash are being celebrated as survival badges of honor, and showing the importance of belting up.

Liam Bethell

Image credits: ourproductionteam

The initiative is part of an NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) campaign to reduce the number of deaths on NZ roads. According to them, 90 people die each year because they weren’t wearing their seatbelt, most of whom are young men in rural areas.

Kahutia Foster

Image credits: ourproductionteam

The confronting portraits are of 10 real-life crash survivors, whose post-crash injuries were recreated by the SFX make-up company PROFX. “A seatbelt really does leave a mark like this,” emergency medical specialist Dr. Natasha McKay, who provided her expertise to the project, explained. “They will save your life, but they will leave you a mark to show how they’ve done it.”

Dion Perry

Image credits: ourproductionteam

The campaign has been shown on billboards around the country, with the survivors releasing emotional videos that tell their story. The aim is to get people sharing their own survival stories, stressing the positive impact of seatbelts and the joy of being alive to tell the tale.

Dan Mason

Image credits: ourproductionteam

NZTA, who worked closely with marketing communications company Clemenger BBDO, was looking to change the attitudes of some men, who view the seatbelt as an optional extra rather than a life-saving necessity. “We’re selling an undesirable product to these guys,” spokesperson Rachel Prince told Designboom. “Research told us they think seatbelt messages are for kids, for the elderly, for everyone else. We worked with them to make the undesirable something they wanted to buy.”