Tom McNamara, Blueprint America

In this week’s news of, ‘That sounds crazy… are you sure that’s a good idea, Canada? What the hell, do it anyways,’ CTV reports, “A 3-D image of a young girl chasing a ball into the street is the newest effort to prevent pedestrian accidents in West Vancouver.”

You might be thinking, ‘3-D — sounds bad-ass.’ And so was I.

CTV even went as far to title the article, “Hologram of girl warns B.C. drivers to be alert.”

Hologram. No way. Awesome.

However, the following line gave me some pause, “The $15,000 illusion, paid for by Preventable.ca, will be installed for a week…”

Maybe 15,000 in future space credits can fund a hologram for a week, but $15,000 — even Canadian dollars — is not putting a hologram on a West Vancouver street for even 30 seconds. Nice try CTV.

Take a look at the supposed hologram (credit: Handout/Preventable.ca)

Apparently, the ‘hologram’ is just a painting of a child on pavement. It will appear to be three dimensional when cars get within 100 feet (with the intention of simulating a potential pedestrian accident scenario).

In all seriousness, and according to Preventable.ca, most child pedestrian-related injuries occur in the fall at the start of each school year. Every week, the group says, two children die from being hit by a car in British Columbia alone.

Still, the campaign is just another example of that good old fashioned Canadian out of the box (extreme) thinking. For instance, a few years ago a similar Canadian group, Prevent-it.ca, produced the following public service announcements for on the job safety. A tradition continued of scaring you safe.