Pedestrians struck by high‐fronted vehicles suffer more severe injuries from ground contact than those struck by passenger cars, but the reasons for this are not clear. In this paper, multibody models of vehicle/pedestrian impacts for different vehicle shapes and speeds and pedestrian sizes and stances are used to analyze the kinematics of pedestrian ground contact. It is shown that patterns are identifiable, there is a correlation between bonnet leading‐edge height and HIC score from ground contact and the body angle at the instant of ground contact is correlated with the HIC score. It is thus evident that there is a geometric explanation for the empirical finding that high‐fronted vehicles cause more significant ground‐related head injuries.