• Cheol Oh, Youn-soo Kang, and Wonkyu Kim.
• Department of Transportation Systems Engineering, Hanyang University at Ansan, Sa1-dong, Sangnok-gu, Ansan-city, Kyunggi-do 426-791, Republic of Korea. cheolo@hanyang.ac.kr
• Accid Anal Prev. 2008 May 1; 40 (3): 935-42.

AbstractThis paper proposes a methodology to quantify the safety benefits of an active hood lift system (AHLS) for protecting pedestrians. AHLS works by lifting up the hood of a vehicle to obtain the space to absorb the impact energy before the pedestrian's head hits the hood in pedestrian-vehicle collision. The safety benefit is defined as the number of pedestrian lives saved by the AHLS. Both actual accident data analysis and simulation experiments were conducted to develop a probabilistic pedestrian fatality model based on the head injury criteria (HIC). Then, the fatality model was further applied to estimate the safety benefit. Analysis results revealed that the 95% confidence interval of the number of pedestrian lives saved by the AHLS was between 32.8 and 83.6 pedestrians. It is believed that the proposed methodology could be further applied in evaluating other vehicular technologies for traffic safety. In addition, the outcomes of this study would be effectively utilized in establishing relevant traffic safety policies.

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