Impact Speed and a Pedestrian's Risk of Severe Injury or Death

Injury severity of pedestrians, bicyclists and motorcyclists resulting from crashes with reversing cars

“…Similar to previous investigations that demonstrate the correlation between impact speed and injury severity (Rosen et al, 2011;Tefft, 2013), this study found that at least in pedestrians speed did correlate with the risk of injury (s. Fig. 5).…”

“…Previous studies involving pedestrians struck by vehicles for example have demonstrated an association between high-energy collisions and risk of death as well as the correlation between impact speed and injury severity. (Rosen et al, 2011;Tefft, 2013). In a 2013 study by Matsui et al, authors demonstrated that an impact speed of less than 30 km/h resulted in serious injury in less than 27% of collisions with pedestrians and fatalities in less than 5% (Matsui et al, 2013a,b).…”

Effects of safety measures on driver's speed behavior at pedestrian crossings

“…often fail to yield to a pedestrian (Mitman et al, 2010) and that pedestrian safety at zebra crossings depends mainly on the speed of the vehicle. With an increase in the speed, in fact, the probability of a vehicle-pedestrian conflict and a pedestrian fatality accident is higher (Pasanen, 1992;Várhelyi, 1998;Rosén and Sander, 2009;Rosén et al, 2011;Tefft, 2013;Kröyer et al, 2014). For example, Pasanen (1992) found that, for a collision at a speed of 50 km/h, the risk of a fatal accident is approximately eight times higher compared to an event that occurs at a speed of 30 km/h.…”

“…Similarly, Rosén and Sander (2009) found that the fatality risk at 50 km/h is more than twice that at 40 km/h and more than five times higher than the risk at 30 km/h. Tefft (2013) found that the average risk of death reaches 10% at an impact speed of 24.1 mph, 25% at 32.5 mph, 50% at 40.6 mph, 75% at 48.0 mph, and 90% at 54.6 mph. Despite the inconsistency in the values of the actual risk at a given speed (Kröyer et al, 2014), it is commonly thought to consider that a modest speed reduction/increase has a considerable effect on the probability of a fatality and, thereby, on the number of fatal accidents.…”

The relation between speed environment, age and injury outcome for bicyclists struck by a motorized vehicle – a comparison with pedestrians

“…Despite the differences, it is reasonable to expect that factors that are highly influential for the outcome for struck pedestrians will also influence the outcome for struck bicyclists; e.g., impact speed (Rosén and Sander, 2009;Tefft, 2011), age (Henary et al, 2006;Peng and Bongard, 1999), vehicle type (Desapriya et al, 2010;Lefler and Gabler, 2004) and mean travel speed of motorized vehicles (Kröyer, 2014). This article has two aims: (1) to analyze the relation between the injury severities of struck bicyclists, the age of the victim and the mean travel speed at the accident location.…”