Investigations of pedestrian fatalities in vehicle-pedestrian accdents in less motorized countries (LMC) and highly motorized countries (HMC) indicate that the proportion of pedestrians killed in the former is much higher than that in the later. In the HMCs a majority of the accidents involve private cars, whereas in the LMCs trucks and buses are the vehicles which hit pedestrians more often. This paper contains a general review of traffic accidents in India and Sweden, and vehicle-pedestrian accidents in New Delhi and Gothenburg, with the main emphasis on the bus-pedestrian impact situation. Buses were involved in 193 (32%) out of a total of 602 pedestrian and bicyclist fatalities in Delhi in 1985 for which details are known. This indicates the importance of minimizing injuries due to bus impacts with this class of road users.

A preliminary investigation has been done to examine the possibilities of designing a safer bus front by using a mathematical model of the bus-pedestrian impact. To evaluate the effect of a protective structure, in the form of padding on the front structures of the bus in bus-pedestrian accidents, a simulation of the impact has been performed using the MADYMO 3D program. The results from the computer simulation indicate that it should be possible to design safer bus fronts which will reduce the severity of injuries at impact speeds below 30 km/h.