Three-year-old Zaadii Tso was tragically killed by a distracted driver in 2015. He loved super heroes and to honor his legacy and warn of the dangers of distracted driving, Travelers and TBWAChiatDay NY commissioned renowned writers and artists Gail Simone of DC’s Birds of Prey, Jeffrey Veregge and Jim Calafiore to create a comic book entitled Zaadii The Legend of Z-Hawk–one of the first Navajo superheroes.
Launching during New York Comic Con’s Metaverse (10/8 – 10/11) and Distracted Driving Awareness Month, the comic book was developed alongside Travelers to showcase the dangers of distracted driving leveraging the usually star studded affair to talk about distracted driving in a fresh way.
The Zaadii comic is the latest in Travelers’ Unfinished Stories series, which aims to honor those lives cut short due to distracted driving. By sharing stories of lives that have been lost, Travelers is hoping to persuade people to stay focused while driving and not be the reason someone’s story goes unfinished.
Travelers is using Twitter in a unique way, being the first brand to unveil a comic book on the platform today.
This “Making Of” video sheds further light on the campaign.
And these sobering distracted driving statistics (which include results from surveys conducted by Hart Research and Travelers) underscore the depth of the problem:
- Roadway dangers have risen this year. The National Safety Council found the U.S. experienced an estimated 20% jump in the death rate – an indicator of how safely drivers are using the roadways – between January and June 2020 compared to the same six-month period in 2019.
- The rate increase comes in spite of a 17% drop in the number of miles driven between January and June. The total number of deaths is up 1% from six-month figures in 2019.
- According to NSC estimates, the 20% increase in the death rate is the highest jump NSC has calculated for a six-month period since 1999.
- Nearly 40% of Generation Z respondents believe they can safely drive while distracted, and one-third of millennials report they have nearly crashed because of distracted driving.
With many Americans headed to the polls over the next month, Travelers is calling on drivers to practice safe driving in a truly unique campaign.