On the eve of New Year’s celebrations in 2018, CEDEM launched a social project aimed at increasing the level of seat belt use as part of the For Safe Roads Campaign. Olia Poliakova, Nadia Dorofieieva, Dasha Astafieva, TAYANNA, Michelle Andrade, Volodymyr Dantes, Oleksandr Pedan and Timur Miroshnychenko posed during the photo session in outfits crumpled by seat belts, telling their own stories about road safety and urging Ukrainians to buckle up.

The Social Project ‘Crumpled but Alive’ became one of our most successful awareness-raising projects in 2018 and reached more than 11 million contacts and included publications in the mass media and social media, as well as advertising on city lights and in the capital’s subway.

The problem of ignoring seat belts is extremely urgent. In Ukraine, a mere 23% of drivers in Ukrainian cities use them, according to a study conducted by the NGO Vision Zero and the Centre for Democracy and Rule of Law. This is the lowest figure among European countries.

Wrinkled clothes is one of the TOP-10 reasons for not buckling up in the car. The project emphasized that even in the holiday rush, it is better to buckle up in a car and wrinkle your clothes than risk your life.

About a hundred publications in mass media and commercial on television turned into tens of thousands of shares in social media. The celebrities who became the project willingly ambassadors shared their stories and materials about seat belts on their Instagram and Facebook pages.

The project we worked on together with Gres Todorchuk PR was released offline not only with publications in glossy magazines. Thanks to the arrangements with the Kyiv City State Administration, 50 city lights on the streets of Kyiv and in the Kyiv subway reminded Ukrainians that there are no excuses for ignoring seat belts for 5 months, from February to April 2019.