TAC: The Tunnel Vision Experiment

To demonstrate the crucial moments of blindness drivers experience when glancing at their smartphone, Gemba’s experiment showed how even elite footballers fail to complete a seemingly simple skills task when a ball passes through a ‘black hole’ in perception. In late 2022, Victoria’s Transport Accident Commission (TAC) tasked sports and entertainment agency Gemba with finding a way to leverage their ongoing brand partnership with Melbourne Victory FC and build upon the commission’s existing road safety campaign – ‘If you’re on your phone, you’re driving blind’. Using two of the club’s top players Chris Ikonomidis and George Timotheou, Gemba created a world-first experiment, The Tunnel Vision Experiment. The test saw each of the footballers attempt what (at first glance, anyway) appeared to be an easy task – all they had to do was pass a ball through a custom-built tunnel to one another.​ The catch, however, was the entire interior of the tunnel and the ball itself was painted in Black 3.0, a substance that absorbs 99% of light, rendering any object or surface absent of form, structure, or depth. ​This meant that during those moments when the ball traversed the tunnel, it briefly disappeared. The exterior facade of the tunnel structure resembled a giant smartphone screen to remind people that if they’re on their phone while behind the wheel, they’re distracted and blind to the task at hand. Gemba created a series of films to feature in stadium at AAMI Park and social and digital channels.