Pedestrian Height Research Articles

A Method to Evaluate Vehicle Impact Speeds in Passenger Car-Pedestrian Accidents

This paper aimed to research the relationship between the wrap around distance (WAD) to head contact and vehicle impact speed based on real pedestrian traffic accidents with video. A team was established to collect passenger car-pedestrian accident cases occurring between July 2011 and July 2015 in Chongqing, China. A total of 15 pedestrian crashes were selected into the sample. Impact speeds were calculated by a video analysis technology, and the WAD was revised according to the average height of pedestrians involved in the sample. The relationship between the WAD and impact speed was analyzed using linear regression analysis. We propose a method to evaluate the impact speed in passenger car-pedestrian. These results will contribute to the development of judicial identification and research of pedestrian injury.

위너 최적화 기법을 이용한 영상기반 보행자 키 추정

In this paper, we proposed a method which can detect pedestrians from CCTV video and estimate the height of the detected objects. We separate the foreground using Gaussian mixture model and the pedestrian is detected using the conditions such as the width-height ratio and the size of the candidate objects. In order to obtain the optimal model for estimating the height of pedestrian, we get many training data from the pedestrian whose height is known. Using these training data, we designed optimal Wiener height estimator and used to estimate the height of pedestrians. The height of the pedestrian at various distance is estimated and the accuracy is evaluated. In the experimental results, proposed method shows that it can estimate the height of pedestrian for various positions effectively.

Micrometeorological simulations to predict the impacts of heat mitigation strategies on pedestrian thermal comfort in a Los Angeles neighborhood

The urban heat island impacts the thermal comfort of pedestrians in cities. In this paper, the effects of four heat mitigation strategies on micrometeorology and the thermal comfort of pedestrians were simulated for a neighborhood in eastern Los Angeles County. The strategies investigated include solar reflective ‘cool roofs’, vegetative ‘green roofs’, solar reflective ‘cool pavements’, and increased street-level trees. A series of micrometeorological simulations for an extreme heat day were carried out assuming widespread adoption of each mitigation strategy. Comparing each simulation to the control simulation assuming current land cover for the neighborhood showed that additional street-trees and cool pavements reduced 1.5 m air temperature, while cool and green roofs mostly provided cooling at heights above pedestrian level. However, cool pavements increased reflected sunlight from the ground to pedestrians at a set of unshaded receptor locations. This reflected radiation intensified the mean radiant temperature and consequently increased physiological equivalent temperature (PET) by 2.2 °C during the day, reducing the thermal comfort of pedestrians. At another set of receptor locations that were on average 5 m from roadways and underneath preexisting tree cover, cool pavements caused significant reductions in surface air temperatures and small changes in mean radiant temperature during the day, leading to decreases in PET of 1.1 °C, and consequent improvements in thermal comfort. For improving thermal comfort of pedestrians during the afternoon in unshaded locations, adding street trees was found to be the most effective strategy. However, afternoon thermal comfort improvements in already shaded locations adjacent to streets were most significant for cool pavements. Green and cool roofs showed the lowest impact on the thermal comfort of pedestrians since they modify the energy balance at roof level, above the height of pedestrians.

Pedestrian-Vehicle Accidents Reconstruction with PC-Crash®: Sensibility Analysis of Factors Variation

This paper describes the main findings of a study performed by INSIA-UPM about the improvement of the reconstruction process of real world vehicle-pedestrian accidents using PC-Crash® software, aimed to develop a software tool for the estimation of the variability of the collision speed due to the lack of real values of some parameters required during the reconstruction task.The methodology has been based on a sensibility analysis of the factors variation. A total of 9 factors have been analyzed with the objective of identifying which ones were significant. Four of them (pedestrian height, collision angle, hood height and pedestrian-road friction coefficient) were significant and were included in a full factorial experiment with the collision speed as an additional factor in order to obtain a regression model with up to third level interactions. Two different factorial experiments with the same structure have been performed because of pedestrian gender differences.The tool has been created as a collision speed predictor based on the regression models obtained, using the 4 significant factors and the projection distance measured or estimated in the accident site. The tool has been used on the analysis of real-world reconstructed accidents occurred in the city of Madrid (Spain). The results have been adequate in most cases with less than 10% of deviation between the predicted speed and the one estimated in the reconstructions.

A CFD study on the effectiveness of trees to disperse road traffic emissions at a city scale

This paper focuses on the effectiveness of trees at dispersing road traffic emissions on a city scale. CFD simulations of air-pollutant concentrations were performed using the OpenFOAM software platform using the k-ε model. Results were validated against the CODASC wind tunnel database before being applied to a LIDAR database of buildings and trees representing the City of Leicester (UK). Most other CFD models in the literature typically use idealised buildings to model wind flow and pollution dispersion. However, the methodology used in this study uses real buildings and trees data from LIDAR to reconstruct a 3D representation of Leicester City Centre. It focuses on a 2×2 km area which is on a scale larger than those usually used in other CFD studies. Furthermore, the primary focus of this study is on the interaction of trees with wind flow dynamics. It was found that in effect, trees have a regionally beneficial impact on road traffic emissions by increasing turbulence and reducing ambient concentrations of road traffic emissions by 7% at pedestrian height on average. This was an important result given that previous studies generally concluded that trees trapped pollution by obstructing wind flow in street canyons. Therefore, this study is novel both in its methodology and subsequent results, highlighting the importance of combining local and regional scale models for assessing the impact of trees in urban planning.

Learning multi‐planar scene models in multi‐camera videos

Many man‐made environments are constructed with multiple levels where people walk, joined by stairs, ramps and overpasses. This study proposes a novel method to learn the geometry of a scene containing more than a single ground plane by tracking pedestrians and combining information from multiple views. The method estimates a scene model with multiple planes by measuring the variation of pedestrian heights across each camera's field of view. It segments the image into separate plane regions, estimating the relative depth and altitude for each image pixel, thus building a three‐dimensional reconstruction of the scene. By estimating the multiple planes, the method enables tracking algorithms to follow objects (pedestrians and/or vehicles) that are moving on different ground planes in the scene. The authors also introduce what they believe is the first public dataset with pedestrian traffic on multiple planes to encourage other researchers to compare their work in this field.

영상기반 보행자 키 추정 방법

Object recognition is one of the key technologies of the monitoring system for the prevention of various intelligent crimes. The height is one of the physical information of a person, and it may be important information for identification of the person. In this paper, a method which can detect pedestrians from CCTV images and estimate the height of the detected objects, is proposed. In this method, GMM (Gaussian Mixture Model) method was used to separate the moving object from the background and the pedestrian was detected using the conditions such as the width-height ratio and the size of the candidate objects. The proposed method was applied to the CCTV video, and the height of the pedestrian at far-distance, middle- distance, near-distance was estimated for the same person, and the accuracy was evaluated. Experimental results showed that the proposed method can estimate the height of the pedestrian as the accuracy of 97% for the short-range, 98% for the medium-range, and more than 97% for the far-range. The image sizes for the same pedestrian are different as the position of him in the image, it is shown that the proposed algorithm can estimate the height of pedestrian for various position effectively.

Proof-of-Concept of the Shape Memory Alloy ReseTtable Dual Chamber Lift Device for Pedestrian Protection With Tailorable Performance

As automobile use expands in population-dense cities across the world, there is a growing need for new approaches to mitigate the consequences to pedestrians of pedestrian/automotive collisions. This is especially challenging for passive approaches since there is an increasing internal space demand that reduces the crush zone between the relatively compliant hood and rigid underhood components. One unique approach is an active hood lift which raises the hood upon detection of a collision with a pedestrian to increase the crush zone. This approach is technically challenging due to the fast and accurate timing which is sensitive to extrinsic factors (including pedestrian height and weight and the need for reusable/automatically resettable functionality. This paper presents a novel hood lift concept: the shape memory alloy ReseTtable (SMArt) dual chamber lift device which is reusable, automatically resettable, and has tunable performance both off-line, and on-line to adjust to extrinsic factors. This device is situated under the rear corners of the hood and stores energy in the form of compressed air in opposing sides of a dual chamber pneumatic cylinder and a high-speed shape memory alloy exhaust valve (SEV) vents the upper chamber within milliseconds to allow the lower chamber to deploy the hood. A general multistage sequential design process is outlined that enables lift timing performance to be tailored by parametric design off-line and by varying operating parameters on-line. A proof-of-concept prototype was built and experimentally characterized for a midsize sedan case study confirming the timing, load capability and stroke of the device on the benchtop and the complete operational cycle in a full-scale automobile hood bay. The impact of additional mass on the lift timing was measured and two on-line adjustable operating parameters (pressure and valve timing) were investigated for their ability to compensate for the mass and other extrinsic effects. While this was a limited study of this new active technological approach to pedestrian safety, it does indicate promise to meet the strict demands of an active lift and a tailorable, resettable/reusable device.

A study on chest injury mechanism and the effectiveness of a headform impact test for pedestrian chest protection from vehicle collisions

This study was aimed at investigating the injury mechanism of pedestrian chests in collisions with passenger vehicles of various frontal shapes and examining the influence of the local structural stiffness on the chest injury risk by using the headform impact test at the chest contact area of the vehicle. Three simulations of vehicle to pedestrian collisions were conducted using three validated pedestrian finite element (FE) models of three pedestrian heights of 177 (AM50th), 165 and 150cm and three FE vehicles models representing a one-box vehicle, a minicar and a medium car. The validity of the vehicle models was evaluated by comparing the headform acceleration against the measured responses from headform impact tests. The chest impact kinematics and the injury mechanisms were analyzed in terms of the distribution of the von Mises stress of the ribcage and in terms of the chest deflections. The chest contact locations on the front panel and the bonnet top were identified in connection to the causation of rib fractures. The risk of rib fractures was predicted by using the von Mises stress distribution. The headform impact tests were carried out at the chest contact area on the front panel and bonnet to examine the safety performance with respect to pedestrian chest protection. In simulations of the one-box vehicle to pedestrian collisions, the chest was struck directly by the frontal structure at a high velocity and deformed substantially, since a shear force was generated by the stiff windshield frame. The acceleration of the headform was related to the rib deflections. The injury threshold of the ribcage deflection (42mm) corresponded to the headform average acceleration of 68G. In the minicar collision, the chest was struck with the bonnet top and cowl area at a low velocity, and the deformation was small due to the distributed contact force between the chest and the bonnet top. Besides, the ribcage deformation was too small for bridging a relation between the headform accelerations and rib deflections. In the medium car collision, the deformation mode of the chest was similar to that in the minicar collision. The chest collided with the bonnet top at a low velocity and deformed uniformly. The deflection of the ribs had an observable correlation with the headform accelerations measured in the headform impact tests. The frontal shape of a vehicle has a large influence on a pedestrian’s chest loadings, and the chest deformation depends on the size of the pedestrian and the stiffness of the vehicle. The one-box passenger vehicle causes a high chest injury risk. The headform impactor test can be utilized for the evaluation of the local stiffness of a vehicle’s frontal structure. The reduction of the headform acceleration is an effective measure for pedestrian chest protection for specific shapes of vehicles by efficacy in modifying the local structural stiffness.

Understanding peak pedestrian exposures due to traffic emissions within the urban environment

This paper investigates pedestrian exposure to traffic emissions at the Marylebone Road–Gloucester Place intersection in central London, taking a particular interest in the peak exposures occurring within minutes. The approach is based on the large eddy simulation modelling methodology, which enables high spatial resolution of air movements and pollutant concentrations to be achieved at relatively moderate computational cost. The results show the complexity of the air flows in the vicinity of the intersection at pedestrian height and the large variability of peak exposures due to the turbulent air flows.

Quantifying Active Safety System Performance at Pedestrian Detection

This practice-oriented paper discusses a novel approach to quantifying the quality of pedestrian detection by in-vehicle night-vision technology. The MaxiMin metric of similarity between sets is sufficiently general to be applicable to a broad range of sensor systems and is not limited to infrared systems. The metric is an asymmetric variant of the Hausdorff Distance that incorporates two sets of weights. The first applies a greater weigh to false negatives (misses) than to false positives (false alarms). The second uses pedestrian height as a proxy for proximity and, hence, risk. The discussion of the mathematics of the metric is followed by a pair of illustrative examples and a discussion of how the metric can inform the design and active safety systems.

Simulation analysis of site design and layout planning to mitigate thermal environment of riverside residential development

The present study explains the application of a numerical simulation to investigate the thermal environment of a new riverside residential development in summer. The case study area consists of more than one hundred two-story detached houses built next to a river near Tokyo, Japan. According to the meteorological data, prevailing wind directions are at an angle to the northbound river flow affecting the microclimate of the study area in terms of surface temperature of land and buildings, air temperature and wind distribution at pedestrian height. These factors have been estimated using the stepwise CFD (computational fluid dynamics) simulation of radiation, conduction and convection. This method leads to an improvement of outdoor thermal environment by manipulating the site design and layout planning scenarios. The effect of river, permeable pavements and green space on thermal environment is examined by the site design options. Likewise, the impact of building arrangement is evaluated using alternative layout planning scenarios. In total, five scenarios have been simulated for the proposed sustainable development as explained in the paper. Above simulations provided an insight into the mitigation effects of each countermeasure. It is also shown that the management of inflow paths and the creation of wind paths for the interior of the site have the potentials to improve the outdoor thermal environment of riverside residential development.

The Influence of Age on the Morbidity and Mortality of Pedestrian Victims

Objectives. The present study examined the influence of age on the morbidity and mortality of pedestrian victims while controlling for confounding factors. Methods. The Pedestrian Crash Data Study (PCDS) database was used for a cross-sectional study to compare the outcome of senior (age ≥60 years) and adult (age 19 to 50 years) pedestrian victims. The outcome measures were the Injury Severity Score (ISS), Maximum Abbreviated Injury Score (MAIS), Abbreviated Injury Scale (AIS), and Mortality. Logistic regression models were used to estimate age-associated risks while controlling for confounders such as vehicle type, impact speed, and pedestrian height, weight, and gender. Results. Compared to the adult victims, the seniors had a higher average ISS (23 vs. 16, p = 0.018) and higher mortality (30 percent vs. 11 percent, p ≤ 0.001). The seniors were also more likely to have an ISS ≥9 (odds ratio = 2.72; 95 percent CI: 1.31–5.68) and to die (odds ratio = 6.68; 95 percent CI: 2.37–19.88). The seniors were approximately twice as likely to have higher AIS scores to almost every body region. Conclusions. The adjusted age-dependent risks indicated by the current study should be considered when calculating or projecting pedestrian morbidity and mortality. Adjustment in statistical models is essential to achieve precise risk estimates and in turn to appropriately allocate public health rescores.

Pedestrian Head Impact Conditions Depending on the Vehicle Front Shape and Its Construction--Full Model Simulation

For the evaluation of pedestrian protection, the European Enhanced Vehicle-Safety Committee Working Group 17 report is now commonly used. In the evaluation of head injuries, the report takes into account only the hood area of the vehicle. But recent pedestrian accident data has shown the injury source for head injury changing to the windshield and A-pillar from the hood. The head contact points are considered to fall on a parallel to the front shape of the vehicle along the lateral direction, but the rigidity of the outer side construction is different from the center area. The purpose of this study is to consider the reason for the change in injury source for recent vehicle models. The head contact points and contact conditions, speed and angle, are thought to be influenced not only by the vehicle's geometry, but also its construction (rigidity). In this study, vehicle-pedestrian impact simulations were calculated with a finite element model for several hitting positions, including the outer side areas. Full dummy sled tests were conducted to confirm the simulation results. These results show that, for impacts at the outer sides of the vehicle, the head contact points are more rearward than at the vehicle center. In addition, the speed and angle of the head contact were found to be influenced by the pedestrian height.