Abstract
Traffic accident involved with the vulnerable pedestrian is one of the significant concerns, which has higher possibility of fatality than any other accident types. Worldwide significant efforts have been made to establish a vehicle safety regulation, which is internationally agreed, in order to reduce pedestrian casualties in pedestrian-vehicle collisions. One of the key issues in deriving the regulation is how to effectively select the parameter values associated with the regulation. This study firstly develops a method to optimize parameter values. An optimizing problem in terms of maximizing safety benefits, which are life-saving effects by the regulation, is formulated. Extensive actual accident data analysis and simulations are conducted to establish several statistical models to be used in the proposed optimization procedure. A set of parameter values that can produce maximizing life-saving effects is presented as the outcome of this study. It is expected that the proposed method would play a significant role in determining parameters as a decision support tool toward ensuring better pedestrian safety.
