New Perspective to Reduce Pedestrian Ground Contact Injury

Pedestrian ground contact injury in a vehicle-pedestrian accident cannot be ignored. What’s more, is that pedestrian injury can be reduced significantly if the ground related injury can be eliminated. Through reconstructing 34 actual cases by the PC-Crash, parameters which will influence the pedestrian ground contact injury were analyzed. Before the analysis, those simulations were validated by comparing the throw distance with these existing research results. Results shown that the ground related injury [HIC15 and Thoracic acceleration 3 ms (T3ms)] is not only influenced by those parameters known by everyone, such as the impact speed of the vehicle, the pedestrian rotation angle in the whole process; but also influenced by the duration time from the moment the vehicle contact the pedestrian firstly to the moment the pedestrian’s head contact the vehicle firstly (the first impact time, FIT), and the duration time from the moment the vehicle contact the pedestrian firstly to the moment the pedestrian separated from the vehicle (the interaction time, IT). The research will give us a new perspective to reduce ground related injury.