The pedestrian accident is an important accident type that should be studied to reduce the number of accidents worldwide. The factors in pedestrian accidents should be quantitatively clarified in order to get clues to reduce the number of pedestrian accidents. In an effort to address this issue, two vehicle-related areas:​ visibility around A-pillar and pedestrian head protection performance, were analyzed to clarify their influences on the number of pedestrian accidents with the fatality or the injured for each vehicle model in this study.

Macro accident data based on the police data from the year of 2008 through 2011 was compiled by ITARDA (Institute for Traffic Accident Research and Data Analysis) in Japan for around 24,000 pedestrian accidents on 39 vehicle models.

The number of pedestrian accidents with fatal/serious/minor injury per 10,000 registered vehicles for each vehicle model was utilized as objective variables to determine the probability of the accidents. The relationships between each of the vehicle-related factors described above and the objective variables were carefully scrutinized with use of scatter charts, correlation analyses and multiple regression analyses.

It was successfully clarified that the pedestrian accident would be more likely to occur when the angle of hindrance due to A-pillar is larger. It was also captured that the larger horizontal angle of view through the windshield would reduce the occurrence of pedestrian accident.

Furthermore, it was clarified that the influence of visibility on the occurrence of pedestrian accident was different among the straight going maneuver, the right-turn maneuver, etc. It was possible to predict the number of fatality or injured in the pedestrian accidents to a certain degree of probability, with use of the combination of visibility indices.

In addition, it was clearly captured that the better pedestrian head protection score in the JNCAP test would lead to the decrease in the number of pedestrian accidents with the fatality or the injured.

Furthermore, the combination of visibility indices and pedestrian head protection score in the JNCAP test successfully provided much better prediction of the number of fatality or injured in the pedestrian accidents. In other words, it was clarified that the optimization of parameters in visibility indices and pedestrian head protection could lead to the decrease in the number of pedestrian accident.

The effects of the pedestrian head protection score in the JNCAP test on the number of pedestrian accidents with the fatality or the injured were elaborately scrutinized from the viewpoint of danger-cognitive velocity and vehicle maneuver, i.e., straight-going, right-turn and left-turn. The results demonstrated that the pedestrian head protection score in the JNCAP test is highly correlated with the pedestrian accident especially in the case of pedestrian’s being impacted by vehicle body not a tire nor road, and furthermore in the straight going maneuver at over 40km/h of danger-cognitive velocity.

In-depth accident analysis with data of ITARDA and CIDAS (China In-depth Accident Study) was conducted in Japan and China. The result showed that JNCAP would be effective especially in the crash velocity range of 31-50km/h, which accounts for as much as 40% of total 115 occurred in five major cities in China.