A methodology to evaluate injury risk and accident conditions from injuries in vehicle-to-pedestrian accidents Paulo Francisco*, Ana Ferreira*, Ricardo Portal*, João M. P. Dias* * LAETA, IDMEC, Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal E-mail: paulo.francisco@tecnico.ulisboa.pt, jdias@dem.ist.utl.pt Abstract - Pedestrians represent about 20% of the overall fatalities in Europe’s road traffic accidents. In this paper a methodology is proposed to understand why the numbers are so high, especially in the south of Europe and particularly in Portugal, . First a detailed statistical analysis using Ordinal Logistic Regression model (OLR) was applied to the gathered data from all Portuguese accidents with victims in the period 2010-2012. In a second stage accident reconstruction computational techniques using pedestrian biomechanical models are used to evaluate the accident conditions that lead to the injuries, such as the speed and the impact location. For biomechanical injury criterions, the AIS (Abbreviated Injury Scale), the HIC (Head Injury Criterion) and other injury criterions based on the resulting accelerations in the pedestrian’s body are used. The statistical model reported that there were several predictors that significantly influenced the pedestrian injury severity in the event of a road accident, such as Pedestrian’s age, Pedestrian’s gender, Vehicle Design/Category or Driver’s gender. The use of injury scales and biomechanical criterions in in-depth investigation of road accidents, such as AIS, can significantly improve the quality of the reconstruction process. NOTATION HIC Head Injury Criterion ANSR Portuguese National Road Safety Authority AIS Abbreviated Injury Scale a Acceleration EES Energy Equivalent Speed m Mass t Time v Velocity OR Odds Ratio INTRODUCTION The 2013 global status report on road safety conducted by the World Health Organization [1] states that injuries resulting from road traffic accidents are a public health problem and an impediment to development, being expected, if immediate measures are not implemented, that road accidents will become the 5th leading cause of death in the world by 2030. The Southern European countries have specific accident patterns and Portugal is one of them. Despite the recent reduction in road accident numbers reported in Portugal, it has not been reflected so distinctly among pedestrians, which still present concerning numbers of road accidents and in terms of accidents severity. Pedestrian fatalities are a social health issue in Portugal. For every 100 accidents of the same type, cars generate 1.5 fatalities whereas pedestrian run-overs generate 3.4. Figure 1 shows the evolution in the number of pedestrian fatalities in the European Union with 15 Member States (excluding Luxembourg because of its small numbers) up to the available 2012 data according to the latest CARE database statistics [2]. From this perspective it is clear that even having a continuous improvement since 2000, Portugal still constitutes one of the worst cases in terms of pedestrian accidents in the most recent years, lagging behind the European average and around the same level as or below larger countries.