Citation

Kuehnel A. Proc. Am. Assoc. Automot. Med. Annu. Conf. 1974; 18: 223-245.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1974, Association for the Advancement of Automotive Medicine)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

All vehicle-pedestrian collision experiments carried out until now were using a dummy in walking or standing posture and the test-dummy was stationary in the the instant of impact. These investigations do not provide necessary and sufficient information to reconstruct the real-world pedestrian accidents, particularly aspects of injury mechanism. Uncertainties in the prediction of real-world accidents are mainly caused due to the rotation of the pedestrian about the vertical axis and the point of impact on the vehicle. Case studies of real accidents show certain influence of pedestrian movement on dynamic behavior of the collision. Therefore, to realize the conditions of real-world accidents a special test set up have been developed to simulate an impact of a moving dummy crossing the road and a moving vehicle.

From these investigations it could be concluded that a car "friendly to pedestrian" should have the following dynamic impact properties: 1. the maximum throw height of human body should be low, 2. minimum head velocity onto the bonnet, and 3. the contact time between the pedestrian and the vehicle should be maximum.

Including the pedestrian movement additional possibilities of accident reconstruction offer: determination of impact speed and impact point by maximum displacement of pedestrian and also from distance of head dent on the bonnet to front bumper; determination of walking direction (left or right) from configuration of head dent and pelvis dent.

In addition, these investigations enable predictions of the relationship between injuries and environments.