Faced with the importance of road accidents involving pedestrians struck by passenger cars (18 % of those killed in road accidents in France), an experimental programme of vehicle/pedestrian impact analysis has been since 1979 developed. The programme is an example of teamwork between doctors and engineers.

The theme of this paper is to compare the influence of different vehicles used upon the consequences of impact, at a speed of 32 km/h and on the basis of tests with cadavers.

The results of this research show that there is a great similarity between the vehicles used. In spite of the differences of mass, of profile, of bonnet length, and of the position and the shape of the front bumper, the variations in terms of injury consequences, as well as the impact kinematics, are difficult to weigh up.

The improvement of pedestrian safety implies either changes affecting small areas and necessarily having limited effects, or alterations to the parts of the vehicles that are struck by pedestrians, such alterations involving characteristics that are specific to this type of protection.