Pedestrian impact accounts for approximately 20 percent of the motor-vehicle-related fatalities in the U.S. and over 40 percent in some European countries. Despite the magnitude of this problem, however, until recently virtually all experimental research in the area of crash injury reduction has been concentrated on developing knowledge, systems, and devices which will increase the probability for survival or reduced injury of conventionally seated vehicle occupants.

An in-house program to study the pedestrian/vehicle impact problem indicated that one of the factors responsible for the relative lack of experimental effort on pedestrian impact injury attenuation was a basic lack of an experimental methodology which could treat this complex accident mode in a highly controllable/repeatable manner (e.g., in a manner similar to the crash simulation procedures utilized extensively in the development of seat belts, energy-absorbing steering columns, etc). The subject study, therefore, proceeded to develop an experimental test methodology which could utilize actual or "stylized" vehicle front end structures mounted on a Hyge sled to impact "pedestrians" simulated by instrumented anthropomorphic adult and child dummies. A total of 22 fully-instrumented pedestrian/vehicle sled shots were conducted, and the results indicate that a very viable methodology has been developed. The results also indicate that [1] work on vehicle profile modifications and/or energy absorbing schemes should be fruitful and [2] the same basic test methodology should prove useful in addressing the problem of crashes involving generally unsupported occupants such as standees riding in a mass transit vehicle.