A comparative study of head dynamic response and fatality risk of pedestrian and bicyclist in vehicle collisions

Journal article, 2014

The objective of this study is to compare the casualty risk of pedestrians and bicyclists in urban traffic through an analysis of real-world accident data in China. For this purpose, 438 cases were selected as samples from the accidents collected by in-depth investigation of vehicle accidents in China. A statistic measurement of the fatality risk with respect to impact speed was carried out by logistic regression analysis. Then, 21 pedestrian and 24 bicyclist accidents were further selected for reconstruction with MADYMO program. A comparative analysis was conducted on the basisi of the results from accident analysis and computer reconstructions for the fatality risk and the head dynamic response of pedestrians and bicyclists. The results have indicated that the vehicle impact speed has a significant relationship with the fatality risk of both pedestrians and bicyclists and bicyclists suffered slightly lower fatality risk compared to pedestrians. Besides, the head impact conditions such as head impact speed and impact angle between pedestrians and bicyclists are also obviously different. These findings can contribute to the setting of a more reasonable speed limit for urban traffic in China and generate strategies for bicyclist and pedestrian head protection.