Swiss VR application was awarded for innovative prevention work

Thanks to AXA Winterthur's virtual reality application, you can put yourself in the uncomfortable situation of an accident - without being harmed by it. The 360° was awarded a prize at the Frankfurt Motor Show IAA.

Experiencing a rear-end collision and its consequences from the driver's perspective - without being in the car yourself - is made possible by the 360-degree video "One second away" produced by AXA Winterthur last year. At the Frankfurt Motor Show IAA in September, AXA received the OttoCar Award in the category "Road Safety and Accident Prevention" for the innovative video. The award-winning video was conceived and realised in collaboration with the 360° VR agency CONCEPT360about which we have also already reports have.

Increased awareness through virtual reality

The video uses 360-degree technology to show a rear-end collision from different perspectives and makes the crash and its consequences directly tangible for the viewer.

The situation is presented as follows: The vehicle gets into a traffic jam on the motorway. While the driver recognises the danger in good time, brakes and stops, the driver behind is inattentive and crashes into the stationary line of vehicles at 60 km/h.

Prevention work with VR

AXA presented the award-winning video for the first time at the 2016 crash tests in Dübendorf - since then, the video has been shown at numerous customer events for prevention purposes and has amazed thousands of viewers. AXA is thus breaking new ground in its prevention work: "Thanks to virtual reality, viewers feel they are in the middle of the situation - they experience the accident, so to speak," says Andreas Schumacher from Accident Research & Prevention at AXA Winterthur.

In the video, the most important prevention tips are also mentioned, from the correct adjustment of the headrest to how to behave in traffic jams. In this way, the viewer learns once again how to behave in a hopefully impressive and lasting way.

The 360° video clip is therefore a comprehensive short documentary and also contains background information on how the film was made.

Source: Media release