Severity of injury resulting from pedestrian–vehicle crashes: What can we learn from examining the built environment?

This paper examines the impact of personal and environmental characteristics on severity of injuries sustained in pedestrian–vehicle crashes using a generalized ordered probit model. The data covers 2000–2004 of pedestrian–vehicle crashes taken from police incident reports for Baltimore City and supplemented with local land use, urban form and transportation information specific to the individual crash locations. The results on personal and behavioral variables confirm previous findings. Women pedestrians involved in crashes tend to be injured less frequently than their male counterparts; children have an increased likelihood of sustaining injuries and older persons are more likely to be fatally injured. Pedestrians who cross against the traffic signal, are not in a crosswalk and are involved in a crash after dark are associated with greater injury risk. Of the built environment policy variables of interest, transit access and greater pedestrian connectivity, such as central city areas, are significant and negatively associated with injury severity. These results suggest that the environmental conditions should be given more scrutiny and be an important consideration when evaluating and planning for pedestrian safety.     

Agent-based simulation framework for mixed traffic of cars,pedestrians and trams

In this paper, we report on the construction of a new framework for simulating mixed traffic consisting of cars, trams, and pedestrians that can be used to support discussions about road management, signal control, and public transit. Specifically, a layered road structure that was designed for car traffic simulations was extended to interact with an existing one-dimensional (1D) car-following model and a two-dimensional (2D) discrete choice model for pedestrians. The car model, pedestrian model, and interaction rules implemented in the proposed framework were verified through simulations involving simple road environments. The resulting simulated values were in near agreement with the empirical data. We then used the proposed framework to assess the impact of a tramway extension plan for a real city. The simulation results showed that the impact of the proposed tramway on existing car traffic would not be serious, and by extension, implied that the proposed framework could help stakeholders decide on expansion scenarios that are satisfactory to both tram users and private car owners.     

An Optimization Model for Guiding Pedestrian–Vehicle Mixed Flows During an Emergency Evacuation

In most metropolitan areas, an emergency evacuation may require a potentially large number of pedestrians to walk some distance to access their passenger cars or resort to transit systems. In this process, the massive number of pedestrians may place a tremendous burden on vehicles in the roadway network, especially at critical intersections. Thus, the effective road enforcement of the vehicle and pedestrian flows and the proper coordination between these two flows at critical intersections during a multimodal evacuation process is a critical issue in evacuation planning. This article presents an integrated linear model for the design of optimized flow plans for massive mixed pedestrian–vehicle flows within an evacuation zone. The optimized flow can also be used to generate signal timing plans at critical intersections. In addition, the linear nature of the model can circumvent the computational burden to apply in large-scale networks. An illustrating example of the evacuation around the M&T Bank Stadium in downtown Baltimore, MD, is presented and used to demonstrate the model's capability to address the complex interactions between vehicle and pedestrian flows within an evacuation zone. Results of simulation experiments verify the applicability of our model to a real-world scenario and further indicate that accounting for such conflicting movements will yield more reliable estimation of an evacuation's required clearance time.     

行人-汽车碰撞试验腿部模块的可变形膝关节参数设计

根据行人-汽车碰撞中对行人腿部碰撞保护相关技术法规的要求,针对行人下肢的损伤机理,分析了腿部可变形膝关节部件的设计方法。通过力学模型的建立和分析,提出了确定膝关节部件结构类型、尺寸和材料的力学计算方法以及部件标定试验验证方案。经算例和部件的标定试验验证,该设计方法满足EEVCWG10的弯曲部分技术要求,可变形膝关节设计原理和分析方法可以为其他行人腿部模块技术规范中的部件设计提供参考。     

相容性车身及行人假人

近年来,随着各国正面碰撞试验法规的实施,汽车的碰撞安全性能有了显著的提高。然而,由于在碰撞中存在两车辆的“质量”、“刚度”和“结构”并不相同的情况,当大车与小车发生正面碰撞时,往往会导致小车乘员舱产生比较大的变形,因此提高小车的自我保护性能就显得尤为重要。为了达到正面碰撞中两车的相容性,本文介绍了一种新型车身结构在实车中的应用情况,以及其提升车辆安全性能的作用,并简要介绍了本田汽车公司在行人保护方面所做的研究。     

Dynamic stride length adaptation according to utility and personal space

Pedestrians adjust both speed and stride length when they navigate difficult situations such as tight corners or dense crowds. They try to avoid collisions and to preserve their personal space. State-of-the-art pedestrian motion models automatically reduce speed in dense crowds simply because there is no space where the pedestrians could go. The stride length and its correct adaptation, however, are rarely considered. This leads to artefacts that impact macroscopic observation parameters such as densities in front of bottlenecks and, through this, flow. Hence modelling stride adaptation is important to increase the predictive power of pedestrian models. To achieve this we reformulate the problem as an optimisation problem on a disk around the pedestrian. Each pedestrian seeks the position that is most attractive in a sense of balanced goals between the search for targets, the need for individual space and the need to keep a distance from obstacles. The need for space is modelled according to findings from psychology defining zones around a person that, when invaded, cause unease. The result is a fully automatic adjustment that allows calibration through meaningful social parameters and that gives visually natural results with an excellent fit to measured experimental data.     

轿车行人保护技术发展的重要性

行人安全越来越成为人们关注的重要问题,文章针对行车过程中行人伤害特点来说明行人保护技术研究的重要意义。随着我国将于2013年正式实施《汽车对行人的碰撞保护》标准,必然将推动我国行人保护技术的快速发展。文章结合行人保护技术的发展历程及现阶段此项技术研究的方法和应用现状,为此方面的研究工作提供参考,从而使我国汽车工业得以更加完善发展。     

总布置设计对行人保护的重要影响

随着经济的迅速发展,我国已成为世界上重要的汽车生产和消费国之一。汽车迅速发展带来的后果是汽车安全事故的频发。为了有效地控制汽车事故中行人的伤亡率,文章介绍了欧盟强制法规的碰撞条件及评价分值,以约束汽车结构和性能,增加行人安全系数。分析了在前期总布置中设计对行人保护有作用的造型和结构。指出总布置工作对整车安全和行人安全起到了非常关键的作用,越来越受到各个厂家和消费群体的重视。