The objective of this study was to calculate the effectiveness of a pedestrian injury mitigation system that autonomously brakes the car prior to impact at reducing fatal and severe injuries. The database from the German In-Depth Accident Study (GIDAS) was queried for pedestrians hit by the front of cars from 1999 to 2007. Information on vehicle and pedestrian velocities and trajectories were used to estimate the field of view needed for avehicle-based sensor to detect the pedestrians one second prior to the actual crash. The pre-impact braking system was assumed to provide a brakingdeceleration up to the limit of the road surface conditions, but never toexceed 0.6g. New impact speeds were calculated for pedestrians that wouldhave been detected by the sensor. These calculations assumed that all pedestrians that were within the given field of view and not hidden by surrounding objects would be detected. The changes in fatality and severe injuryrisks were quantified using risk curves derived by logistic regression ofthe accident data. Summing the risks for all pedestrians, new casualty numbers were obtained. The study documents that the effectiveness of reducing fatally (severely) injured pedestrians reached 40% (27%) at a field of view of 40degrees. Increasing the field of view further led to only marginal improvements in effectiveness. The full text of this paper may be found at: http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/pdf/esv/esv21/09-0132.pdf For the covering abstract see ITRD E145407.
Abstract