Study of correlation between driver emergency measures and pedestrian injury based on combined driving simulator and computer simulation

Abstract

Driving simulator and computer simulation are combined to reconstruct the kinematic process of pedestrian-vehicle crash. Firstly, in-depth data from 158 accident cases in Beijing is analyzed. Additionally, the typical accident factors, collision characteristics, road status, and drivers' emergency behavior are classified and integrated to establish virtual scenarios of pedestrian vehicle accidents. Moreover, volunteer drivers are tested on the driving simulator while data of vehicles' real-time kinetic parameters from different emergency measure stages is recorded. Furthermore, the process of pedestrian-vehicle crash is modeled and simulated by accident analysis software PC-CRASH to obtain the data of pedestrian's head centroid acceleration, and the HIC value is calculated as an injury indicator. Finally, the collected data is analyzed to find out the relation between drivers' various emergency measures and pedestrians' injury severity. The results show that steering with braking is the most effective measure among drivers' various measures. This paper may provide some valuable suggestions on research of driving safety as well as intelligent transportation. © 2013 Quan Yuan et al.