New York State pedestrians are involved in 28,000 motor vehicle accidents each year, and 1,000 of these pedestrians receive fatal injuries. This paper presents the results of a study of many of the characteristics of this type of accident, based on punch card resumes of the Department of Motor Vehicles accident reports for the year ending July 1970.

A general descriptive outline of host, vehicular, and environmental factors is followed by a demonstration of the relationship between many of these factors and the pedestrian's degree of injury, as assessed by the National Safety Council's A, B, C, D injury severity scale. Examples of interacting effects of several of these factors are presented to emphasize the need for caution before claiming any such relationship to be causal.