The aim of this study is to study the kinematics of adult pedestrians and assess head injury risks based on real‐world accidents. A total of 43 passenger car versus pedestrian accidents were selected from accident databases for simulation study. According to real‐world accident investigation, accident reconstructions were conducted using multi‐body system (MBS) pedestrian and car models under MADYMO environment to calculate head impact conditions in terms of head impact velocity, head position and head orientation. Pedestrian head impact conditions from MADYMO simulation results were then used to set the initial conditions in a simulation of a head striking a windscreen using finite element (FE) approach. The results showed strong correlations between vehicle impact velocity and head contact time, throw distance and head impact velocity using a quadratic regression model. In the selected samples, the results indicated that AIS 2+ and AIS 3+ severe head injuries with probability of 50% are caused by head impact velocity at about 33 km/h and 49 km/h respectively. Further, the predicted head linear acceleration, HIC value, resultant angular velocity and resultant angular acceleration for 50% probability of AIS 2+ and AIS 3+ head injury risk are 116 g, 825, 40 rad/s, 11368 rad/s2 and 162 g, 1442, 55 rad/s, 18775 rad/s2 respectively, and the predicted value of 50% probability of skull fracture is 135 g.