If you’re walking by Jack Poole Plaza in downtown Vancouver on Wednesday, November 2, you may be surprised to see a massive banana peel on display.
Our silly sculpture has a very serious point: most “accidents” aren’t really accidents at all. Most of the time, you can see them coming—just like a humongous banana peel. And that makes them 100% preventable.
Everyone understands the banana peel as a symbol of the “accident waiting to happen.” We thought it was a great reminder that actually, serious injuries often don’t just “happen.” A lot of the time, we willingly close our eyes to the risks that are right there in front of us.
We thought it was time to bring back the Big Banana because, well, it’s been an unusual few years, and we could all use a bunch of humour.
This time we’re collaborating with the BC Injury Research and Prevention Unit, Parachute, and the BC Centre for Disease Control to kick off the first day of the first injury prevention conference held in Canada in almost ten years. Over 150 attendees from all across the country are gathering this week to talk about how we can prevent serious injuries from happening in the first place.
Preventable has consistently challenged the idea that serious injuries are a “fact of life” or that they only happen to “other people”. Because we know that these attitudes are the common thread behind serious injuries, whether they’re caused by motor vehicle crashes, falls from ladders, drowning, mixing medications, or anything else.
Let’s not kid ourselves: every day, we take risks we know could lead to injury—we speed on our way to work, we text while crossing the street, we stand on the top rung of the ladder. It’s not like we don’t understand what could happen. We just choose to ignore our inner voice that warns us about it.
We want you to go ape for this sculpture (OK, OK, we’ll stop). The banana is an exaggeration of the risk that is right in front of us. We can’t ignore it! But if we can see it coming, we can prevent it from happening. Just like a banana peel on the ground.
Come say hi, grab a photo by the Big Banana, and grab some free swag by the Olympic Cauldron in downtown Vancouver on November 2, 2022 from 8:30 AM to 3:30 PM. Share your photo and an example of what you can do to prevent injuries on social media using the hashtags #CANInjuryPrevention and #PreventableBanana.