Statistical analysis of pedestrian?vehicle impact characteristics of passenger-car-to-pedestrian accidents in Beijing China

The pedestrian and vehicle profiles in China are different from those in other areas of the world. Using the previously established platform for statistical research of car-to-pedestrian accidents, a statistical analysis of the impact characteristics of car-to-pedestrian accidents has been conducted based on the data from 150 accidents in Beijing from 2002 to 2005. The concerned factors include impact velocities, basic information of the pedestrians involved in the accidents, relative contact locations between cars and pedestrians and injury situations. It was found that a significant number (about 28%) of car-to-pedestrian accidents have contact velocity of 31-40 km/h, and 76% of the accidents occur in the form of a car hitting a pedestrian crossing a road. To study the probability of the relative contact location when pedestrian-to-car accidents occur, knee heights of Chinese adults and front bumper heights of popular passenger cars in China were surveyed. The survey showed that the first contact location on pedestrian is likely to be near the knee joint for males and above that point for females.