Experimental Investigation of Pedestrian Injury Minimization Through Vehicle Design

Experimental pedestrian/vehicle impacts have been conducted using a 50th percentile adult and a 6-year-old-child dummy in an ongoing program to investigate the injury reduction potential of changes in the front end of a vehicle. Peak resultant acceleration levels for the head, chest, pelvis, and knee of each dummy are presented for vehicle fronts that include production compact and full size vehicles, a potential injury mitigating concept vehicle and the Calspan RSV. From these results the next vehicle concept to be investigated and evaluated is synthesized and described.