Improvement of car primary safety systems in accidents involving pedestrians based on accident scenario classification

The development of effective and appropriate safety systems requires real-case study with accurate information. One of the main problems in road safety is the protection of higher exposed road users and pedestrians. The World Health Organization reports 1.24 million people killed in car accidents every year. Half of the casualties are considered vulnerable road users including 22% pedestrians. These figures may vary substantially from one country to another. The poorer the country, the higher the risk. France is on top with only 13% pedestrians killed in 2012 but there is still room for improvement. The objective is to protect pedestrians by developing and optimizing primary safety systems. We have studied through different accident scenarios involving pedestrians depending on the similarities in the causal chain of events. We have identified 5 accident scenarios covering 70% of all cases observed so far and have been able to rebuild the time-space configurations for each scenario as well as evidence use-cases and compounding factors in order to define countermeasures.