Pedestrians and their survivability at different impact speeds

Cuerden, Richard; Richards, David; Hill, Julian

Affiliations

²Loughborough University, United Kingdom

Abstract

The UK’s On The Spot (OTS) accident data collection project started in 2000 and continues to investigate 500 crashes per year. Investigations are undertaken minutes after the collision has occurred to gather all the perishable information. At the time of writing over 3,000 crashes involving all road users and all injury severities have been examined. The OTS database provides a unique insight into the prevailing factors that have been seen to cause crashes and the associated human injuries and vehicle and infrastructure damage that have been witnessed by the crash investigation teams.

The research objective of this paper is to outline the pre and post-crash circumstances of 108 pedestrian crashes. The nature of the events that led to the collision, including the respective travelling speeds, time and distance from the moment the impact was inevitable are described. The information provided can be used to begin to outline the potential effectiveness of future crash mitigation systems. Further, the impact speeds are correlated to the injuries the pedestrians suffered with respect to the impact partner. Lower limb and head injuries are highlighted to be the most frequently injured body regions. The risk of injury for pedestrians with respect to the cars’ speed at the point of impact is outlined and comparison made with the literature.

The small sample size is a limitation to the work, which has not at this stage been proven to be representative of the UK pedestrian accident population. Further, the nature of real world crash investigation means that some of the calculated speed values have reasonably large ranges. However, the work does offer an up to date review of the risk and type of injury versus impact speed for modern vehicles. In addition, the study starts to describe the in-depth pre-crash circumstances witnessed in real life crashes.

Links

URL: http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/pdf/esv/esv20/07-0440-W.pdf

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Cited By (6)

Year	Entry
2013	Niebuhr T, Junge M, Achmus S. Pedestrian injury risk functions based on contour lines of equal injury severity using real world pedestrian/passenger-car accident data. In: 57th Annual Proceedings, Association for the Advancement of Automotive Medicine (AAAM). September 22-25, 2013; Quebec City, QC.145-154.
2009	Cookson R, Cuerden R, Richards D, Rutter H. Pedestrian injury characteristics following road traffic collisions. In: Proceedings of the 21st International Technical Conference on the Enhanced Safety of Vehicles (ESV). June 15-18, 2009; Stuttgart, Germany.
2009	Cookson R, Cuerden R, Richards D, Manning J. A review of the causes of fatal pedestrians’ injuries resulting from collisions with car fronts: comparing vehicles registered in 2002 or later with earlier models. In: Proceedings of the 2009 International IRCOBI Conference on the Biomechanics of Impact. September 9-11, 2009; York, UK.207-221.
2011	Lindman M, Jakobsson L, Jonsson S. Pedestrians interacting with a passenger car: a study of real world accidents. In: Proceedings of the 2011 International IRCOBI Conference on the Biomechanics of Injury. September 14-16, 2011; Krakow, Poland.255-264.
2009	Rosén E, Sander U. Pedestrian fatality risk as a function of car impact speed. Accid Anal Prev. May 2009;41(3):536-542.
2011	Rosén E, Stigson H, Sander U. Literature review of pedestrian fatality risk as a function of car impact speed. Accid Anal Prev. January 2011;43(1):25-33.