In the course of continuous enhancement of passive safety, the development of active safety systems becomes more important to further improve vehicle safety. To develop and evaluate active safety systems, reference scenarios need to be identified and analyzed. In this research, a methodology for the deduction of reference scenarios and a new simulation approach to evaluate the effectiveness of those systems is presented. Using the example of preventive pedestrian safety, accident data of the United States (US) and Germany are analyzed to identify scenarios for pedestrian protection representing the US and German traffic system. The objective was to identify the pre-crash situations and conditions where a system should work and which also function as representative test scenarios for evaluating the system efficacy. German accidents were analyzed using the German-In-Depth- Accident-Study. The National Automotive Sampling System General Estimates System and the Fatality Analysis Reporting System, as well as the Pedestrian Crash Data Study, were used for the US. Different methodologies were applied to define and develop as well as to identify the most important scenarios. The most important accident scenario involving pedestrians in both countries was:​ the vehicle is going straight, the pedestrian is crossing the street and the event happens on an urban / low speed street. To understand the reference scenarios in detail, several parameters which describe the situation, the environment, the vehicle, the driver, the pedestrian, and the consequences of the accident were analyzed. Some examples of detailed analyses of the most important scenario are:​ the most frequent value of the roadway alignment is a straight road, there is only one pedestrian involved who is visible without any obstruction, it is daytime with no precipitation and the road surface is dry.