Toward designing pedestrian-friendly vehicles

Abstract

Due to a rise in global urbanization and motorization, pedestrian injuries continue to be a major public-health problem worldwide. To design pedestrian-friendly vehicles, knowledge of common pedestrian injuries, technologies available for reducing these injuries, and benefit estimations for these technologies are essential. In this report, we present a literature review and provide insights into vehicle designs for improving pedestrian safety. Pedestrian-injury data show that heads and lower extremities are the most commonly injured body regions in vehicle-to-pedestrian crashes, but chest injuries are the second most common injuries after head injuries to cause fatalities. Pedestrian injuries are strongly related to impact speed, pedestrian age, and vehicle type. The increased proportion of older pedestrians and SUVs will likely result in more pedestrian injuries, especially those involving the torso. Adding energy-absorbing materials to the vehicle front-end structures is the most cost-effective way of developing pedestrian-friendly vehicles. However, such improvements often conflict with other design considerations, such as styling, aerodynamics, and safety standards for low-speed crashes and rollovers. Deployable passive safety designs, such as pop-up hoods and windshield airbags, and active safety designs, such as brake-assist systems and autonomous-braking systems, have demonstrated considerable benefits for reducing pedestrian injuries. Integrated passive and active systems are recommended for a further enhancement of pedestrian protection. However, the benefits from different pedestrian-safety designs vary with different types of vehicles and pedestrians with different statures and ages. Consequently it is important to consider implementing specific safety designs to a specific vehicle for maximizing the effectiveness, and population-age profile may also play an important role in selecting pedestrian safety features.

Exploration of Pedestrian Head Injuries—Collision Parameter Relationships through a Combination of Retrospective Analysis and Finite Element Method

“…Serious head injuries can be life threatening and/or cause unpredictable consequences. Nowadays, there are many related materials reported in the research of pedestrian head injuries [19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,43]. In addition, the application of HIC [49], maximum positive pressure, and minimum negative pressure [5] in head injuries assessment has been investigated.…”

“…Although numerous studies regarding vehicle–pedestrian crashes have been performed to prevent pedestrian injuries from collisions in developed countries as well as some developing countries [21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30], it is of particular importance to address some characteristics concerning the relationship between collision parameters and pedestrian injuries, especially in developing countries, such as China. This study explores the characteristics of pedestrian head injuries in car–pedestrian collisions under different parameters by using a statistical analysis method and FEM, which could provide a theoretical basis for automotive design and prevention and treatment of pedestrian injuries.…”

Energy absorbing composite structure for frontal pedestrian protection in electric light vehicles

“…Finally, in order to assess all the variables involved in the optimization of the frontal component and to be able to compare its performance at different impact conditions, it was considered the impact index defined in equation (1). The coefficient 10 7 was used in this This parameter was calculated for each material configuration and impact case analysed, and then an improvement ratio with respect to the initial prototype was obtained by means of equation (2) Improvement ratio (i, j) = Impact index (material configuration i, impact case j) Impact index initial prototype (impact case j) ð2Þ Figure 22 shows the improvement ratios obtained for all material configurations apart from nos 3 and 7, which presented material failure with excessive damage.…”

The effects of selected factors on pedestrian crossings in urban areas

“…3 shows the likelihood of a pedestrian death in relation to vehicle speed. Swedish researchers Erik Rsen and Ulrich Sander found that their predecessors based their findings on pedestrian serious injury or death which overestimated the risk of becoming a fatality [6,7]. Their research shows that the probability of pedestrian fatality is 100% for vehicle speed of app.…”