Analysis of Pedestrian kinematics and injury mechanism in real world accidents

Abstract

Post-impact pedestrian kinematics is complex and depends on various factors such as impact speed, height of the pedestrian, front-end profile of the striking vehicle and pedestrian posture, among others. The aim of this study is to investigate the main factors that determine post-crash pedestrian kinematics. A detailed study of NASS-PCDS (National Automotive Sampling System - Pedestrian Crash Data Study) showed that the vehicle-pedestrian interaction in frontal crashes can be categorized into four types. Pedestrian-vehicle size ratio and the impact speed are the two most influential factors that determine post crash pedestrian kinematics. The findings from the NASS-PCDS study were also confirmed and verified with the help of numerical simulations performed using two modified JAMA human FE models. An adult model (male, 175 cm and 72 kg) and a properly scaled child model (6 years old, 120 cm and 24.5 kg) were effectively utilized to investigate the post-crash kinematics in different conditions.© Springer-Verlag 2013.