Situations of Car-to-Pedestrian Contact

Abstract

Objective: To reduce the severity of injuries and the number of pedestrian deaths in traffic accidents, active safety devices providing pedestrian detection are considered effective countermeasures. The features of car-to-pedestrian collisions need to be known in detail to develop such safety devices.

Methods: Because information on real-world accidents is limited, this study investigated near-miss situations captured by drive recorders installed in passenger cars. We showed similarities of the contact situation between near-miss incidents and real-world fatal pedestrian accidents in Japan. We analyzed the near-miss incident data via video capturing pedestrians crossing the road in front of forward-moving cars. Using a video frame captured by a drive recorder, the time to collision (TTC) was calculated from the car velocity and the distance between the car and pedestrian at the moment that the pedestrian initially appeared.

Results: The average TTC in the cases where pedestrians were not using a pedestrian crossing was shorter than that in the cases where pedestrians were using a pedestrian crossing. The average TTC in the cases where pedestrians emerged from behind obstructions was shorter than that in the cases where drivers had unobstructed views of the pedestrians.

Conclusions: We propose that the specifications of the safety device for pedestrian detection and automatic braking should reflect the severe approach situation for a pedestrian and car including the TTC observed for near-miss incidents.

Keywords:

• car-to-pedestrian contact
• near-miss incident
• fatal accident
• time to collision
• prevention

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Katsumi Moro, formerly at the Society of Automotive Engineers of Japan and currently with the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, and Shoko Oikawa and Ryoko Imaizumi of the National Traffic Safety and Environment Laboratory Japan for their cooperation with the analysis of near-miss data.