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Many Vulnerable Road Users (VRUs) experience injuries and fatalities every year, making road safety a challenge in the World. According to the Ministry of Road Transport and Highway (MoRTH) during the year 2021, a total number of 4,12,432 road accidents have been reported in India, claiming 1,53,972 lives and causing injuries to 3,84,448 persons. In terms of road-user categories, the total fatality of the Pedestrian road-users was 18.9 per cent of persons killed in road accidents. One of the ways to handle the situation is to protect pedestrians utilizing active safety measures in the vehicle. In addition, active safety research heavily relies on perceptions of pre-crash scenarios. The objective of the study is to examine passenger car-to-pedestrian scenarios and model active safety system in a car to prevent or mitigate collisions.

Underride accidents constitute around 5% and 4% of all accidents in India and the US respectively. Yet, the occupant fatality risk is the highest in this accident configuration when compared to other configurations for passenger cars. Especially in India, the fatality rate is even higher due to minimal usage of underride protection devices in the front, rear and sides of commercial vehicles along with poor passenger vehicle crashworthiness. This study specifically aims to compare the factors influencing occupant fatality in the rear underride accidents in India and the US. Given the large number of variables involved in an accident and their complex interaction in a small duration, it was realized that a statistical analysis of this nature will only give an insight into the accident risk trends. The influencing factors are identified by performing Principal Component Analysis (PCA), which is a linear feature extraction technique.

A comprehensive analysis was performed to evaluate the effect of BMI on different body region injuries for side impact. The accident data for this study was taken from the National Automotive Sampling System-Crashworthiness Data System (NASS-CDS). It was found that the mean BMI values for driver and front passengers increases over the years in the US. To study the effect of BMI, the range was divided into three groups: Thin (BMI<21), Normal (BMI 24-27) and Obese (BMI>30). Other important variables considered for this study were model year (MY1995-99 for old vehicles & MY2000-08 for newer vehicles), impact location (side-front F, side-center P & side-distributed Y) and direction of force (8-10 o'clock for nearside & 2-4 o'clock for far-side). Accident cases involving older occupants above 60 years was omitted in order to minimize the bone strength depreciation effect. Results of the present study indicated that the Model Year has influence on lower extremity injuries.

A logistic regression analysis of accident cases in the NASS-PCDS (National Automotive Sampling System-Pedestrian Crash Data Study) database clearly shows that pedestrian pelvis injuries tend to be complex and depend on various factors such as the impact speed, the ratio of the pedestrian height to that of the bonnet leading edge (BLE) of the striking vehicle, and the gender and age of the pedestrian. Adult female models (50th %ile female AF50: 161 cm and 61 kg; 5th %ile female AF05: 154 cm and 50 kg) were developed by morphing the JAMA 50th %ile male AM50 and substituting the pelvis of the GHBMC AM50 model. The fine-meshed pelvis model thus obtained is capable of predicting pelvis fractures. Simulations conducted with these models indicate that the characteristics of pelvis injury patterns in male and female pedestrians are influenced by the hip/BLE height ratio and to some extent by the pelvis bone shape.