VEHICLE-PEDESTRIAN COLLISION EXPERIMENTS WITH THE USE OF A MOVING DUMMY

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 instant of impact. These investigations do not provide necessary and sufficient information to reconstruct the real-world pedestrian accidents, particularly aspects of injury mechanism. Uncertainities 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 behaviour of the collision. Therefore, to realize the conditions of real-world accidents a special test set up has 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; (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.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • Study sponsored by HUK-Verband, Cologne, West Germany.
• Corporate Authors:

  American Association for Automotive Medicine

  801 Green Bay Road
  Lake Bluff, IL  United States  60044

  American Association for Automotive Medicine

  1211 West 22nd Street
  Oak Brook, IL  United States  60523
• Authors:
  • Kuhnel, A
• Conference:
  • 18th Annual Conference of the American Association for Automotive Medicine
  • Location: Toronto Ontario, Canada
  • Date: 1974-9-12 to 1974-9-14
• Publication Date: 1974

Media Info

• Features: Figures; Photos; References;
• Pagination: 23 p.
• Serial:
  • Volume: 18

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Crash injury research; Crash tests; Dummies; Dynamics; Motion; Motor vehicles; Pedestrian vehicle crashes; Pedestrian vehicle interface; Simulation; Traffic conflicts
• Uncontrolled Terms: Moving vehicles
• Subject Areas: Highways; Research; Safety and Human Factors;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 00081286
• Record Type: Publication
• Source Agency: Highway Safety Research Institute
• Contract Numbers: DOT-HS-047-1-063, DOT-HS-031-2-303, DOT-FH-11-7526
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: Mar 26 1975 12:00AM