Passenger and heavy vehicle collisions with pedestrians: Assessment of injury mechanisms and risk

• Published in: Accident analysis and prevention 2023-09, Vol.190, p.107139-107139, Article 107139
• Main Authors: Schubert, Angela, Babisch, Stefan, Scanlon, John M., Campolettano, Eamon T., Roessler, Robby, Unger, Thomas, McMurry, Timothy L.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Accidents, Traffic; Aged; Child; GIDAS; Heavy vehicles; Humans; Injury risk; Logistic regression; Motor Vehicles; Passenger vehicles; Pedestrian; Pedestrians; Wounds and Injuries - epidemiology; Young Adult
• ISSN: 0001-4575; 1879-2057
• DOI: 10.1016/j.aap.2023.107139

•Study used reconstruction data from the German In-Depth Accident Study (GIDAS)•Collisions of pedestrian with passenger vehicles and heavy vehicles.•Development of injury risk functions with logistic regression for frontal collisions.•Children at higher risk of injury compared to young adults.•Highest risk of serious injuries (AIS 3+) for elderly pedestrians. Automated Driving System (ADS) fleets are currently being deployed in several dense-urban operational design domains within the United States. In these dense-urban areas, pedestrians have historically comprised a significant portion, and sometimes the majority, of injury and fatal collisions. An expanded understanding of the injury risk in collision events involving pedestrians and human-driven vehicles can inform continued ADS development and safety benefits evaluation. There is no current systematic investigation of United States pedestrian collisions, so this study used reconstruction data from the German In-Depth Accident Study (GIDAS) to develop mechanistic injury risk models for pedestrians involved in collisions with vehicles. The study queried the GIDAS database for cases from 1999 to 2021 involving passenger vehicle or heavy vehicle collisions with pedestrians. We describe the injury patterns and frequencies for passenger vehicle-to-pedestrian and heavy vehicle-to-pedestrian collisions, where heavy vehicles included heavy trucks and buses. Injury risk functions were developed at the AIS2+, 3+, 4+ and 5+ levels for pedestrians involved in frontal collisions with passenger vehicles and separately for frontal collisions with heavy vehicles. Model predictors included mechanistic factors of collision speed, pedestrian age, sex, pedestrian height relative to vehicle bumper height, and vehicle acceleration before impact. Children (≤17 y.o.) and elderly (≥65 y.o.) pedestrians were included. We further conducted weighted and imputed analyses to understand the effects of missing data elements and of weighting towards the overall population of German pedestrian crashes. We identified 3,112 pedestrians involved in collisions with passenger vehicles, where 2,524 of those collisions were frontal vehicle strikes. Furthermore, we determined 154 pedestrians involved in collisions with heavy vehicles, where 87 of those identified collisions were frontal vehicle strikes. Children were found to be at higher risk of injury compared to young adults, and the highest risk of serious injuries (AIS 3+) existed for the