• Transactions of the Korean Society of Automotive Engineers
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.9-15
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• 2011

This study analyzed contributing factors affecting leg injury severity in pedestrian-vehicle crashes. A Binary Logistic Regression (BLR) method was used to identify the factors. Independent variables include characteristics for pedestrian, vehicle, road, and environmental conditions. The leg injury severity is classified into two classes, which are dependent variables in this study, such as 'severe' and 'minor' injuries. Pedestrian age, collision speed, and the height of vehicle were identified as significant factors for the leg injury. The probabilistic outcome of predicting leg injury severity can be effectively used in not only deriving pedestrian-related safety policies but also developing advanced vehicular technologies for pedestrian protection.

• Journal of Trauma and Injury
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.240-247
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• 2022

Purpose: Studies on the relationship between obesity and injuries, especially those sustained in pedestrian traffic accidents, are lacking. We aimed to assess the effects of obesity on the severity of injury at the time of admission to the emergency room in patients who experienced pedestrian traffic accidents. Methods: This study included trauma patients registered in the Korean Trauma Database from July 1, 2018 to December 31, 2020, whose mechanism of injury was pedestrian traffic accidents and who were treated at a single institution. Those aged below 15 years were excluded. Patients were assigned to nonobese and obese groups based on a body mass index of 25 kg/m². An Injury Severity Score of 25 or greater was considered to indicate a critical injury. Results: In total, 679 cases of pedestrian traffic accidents were registered during the study period, and 543 patients were included in the final analysis. Of them, 360 patients (66.3%) and 183 patients (33.7%) were categorized as nonobese and obese, respectively. The median age was significantly higher in the nonobese group than in the obese group (60 vs. 58 years). Multivariate analysis demonstrated that the odds ratio for critical injury in obese patients was 1.59 (95% confidence interval, 1.01-2.48) compared with nonobese patients. Conclusions: Obesity affected the likelihood of sustaining severe injuries in pedestrian traffic accidents. Future studies should analyze the effects of body mass index on the pattern and severity of injuries in patients with more diverse injury mechanisms using large-scale data.

• Journal of Korean Society of Transportation
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.106-118
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• 2014

The objective of this study is to develop a methodology for evaluating the effectiveness of in-vehicle pedestrian warning systems. Driving Simulator-based experiments were conducted to collect data to represent driver's responsive behavior. The braking frequency, lane change duration, and collision speed were used as measure of effectiveness (MOE) to evaluate the effectiveness. Collision speed data obtained from the simulation experiments were further used to predict pedestrian injury severity. Results demonstrated the effectiveness of warning information systems by reducing the pedestrian injury severity. It is expected that the proposed evaluation methodology and outcomes will be useful in developing various vehicular technologies and relevant policies to enhance pedestrian safety.

• Journal of Trauma and Injury
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.143-149
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• 2019

Purpose: No previous study has assessed elderly pedestrian traffic accidents based on a nationwide database. This study aimed to help primary physicians who examine patients in emergency departments to determine and make prompt and accurate treatment decisions. Methods: This study used data from the Emergency Department-based Injury Indepth Surveillance from 2013 to 2017, managed by the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Pedestrians aged ${\geq}65years$ were included, and using multivariate logistic regression multiple factors were analyzed to determine their relationship with injury severity. Results: Of 227,695 subjects, 6,498 were included, of whom 2,065 (31.8%) were severely injured. There were more female than male patients in all severity groups. Most accidents occurred in the afternoon and on general roads. In the multivariate analysis, the odds ratio (OR) of injury severity for male pedestrians was 1.165 (95% confidence interval: 1.034-1.313, p=0.012). Older age of patients and the use of ambulances were associated with greater injury severity. The accident time affected the degree of injury severity; i.e., compared to dawn, injury severity increased in the morning (OR: 1.246, p=0.047) and decreased at night (OR: 0.678, p<0.001). A significant difference was noted in the correlation between the type of vehicle causing the accident and the accident severity; i.e., motorcycle accidents had lower severity than bicycle accidents (OR: 0.582, p=0.047). Conclusions: Injury severity was correlated with sex, age, transportation to the ED, TA onset time, and type of vehicle. The study results suggest that injury severity may be positively reflected in initial assessments and overall integrated treatments by physicians and in the related policies.

• Journal of Korean Society of Transportation
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• v.31 no.6
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• pp.53-66
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• 2013

The major purpose of this study is to evaluate methodologies to predict the injury severity of pedestrian-vehicle collisions. Methodologies to be evaluated and compared in this study include Binary Logistic Regression(BLR), Ordered Probit Model(OPM), Support Vector Machine(SVM) and Decision Tree(DT) method. Valuable insights into applying methodologies to analyze the characteristics of pedestrian injury severity are derived. For the purpose of identifying causal factors affecting the injury severity, statistical approaches such as BLR and OPM are recommended. On the other hand, to achieve better prediction performance, heuristic approaches such as SVM and DT are recommended. It is expected that the outcome of this study would be useful in developing various countermeasures for enhancing pedestrian safety.

• Journal of Korean Society of Transportation
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.43-51
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• 2011

Since a variety of factors are associated with crash occurrence, the analysis of causes of crash is a hard task for traffic researchers and engineers. Among contributing factors leading to crash, the characteristics of driver is of keen interest. This study attempted to identify factors affecting the severity of pedestrian in the collision between pedestrian and vehicle. In particular, our analyses were focused on the novice driver. A binary logistic regression technique was adopted for the analyses. The results showed that driver's age, crash location, and the frequency of violations were dominant factors for the severity. Findings are expected to be useful information for deffective policy- and education-based countermeasures.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Automotive Engineers
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• v.20 no.6
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• pp.67-72
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• 2012

Novel Front End Module(FEM) with improved pedestrian protection is very important to reduce the severity of pedestrian injury. The FEM needs to have enough space from hood to absorb the energy from any pedestrian collision. In this study, the cooling performance of the FEM to cool the engine was investigated under 25% height reduction. The results indicated that the cooling performance analysis was about 86% level compared to that of the conventional FEM. Also, good qualitative agreement between CFD predictions and experimental measurements was found. This FEM needs the cooling performance enhancement for changed air flow path at the frontal part of vehicle. Therefore, we showed an improved performance using air guide setup and shape modification under the high load condition.

• International Journal of Highway Engineering
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.153-164
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• 2009

This Paper presents the severity analysis result of the year 2006 national pedestrian crashes using the data base of 37,589 records prepared for the National Police Bureau. A set of attributing factors considered to affect pedestrian crash patterns were selected, and their contributing effects were investigated by applying the Ordered Logit Model. This model was selected because this model has been able to afford satisfactory results when the dependent variable involved ordered severity levels; fatal, injury, and property- damage-only in this investigation. The investigation has unveiled the followings; First, the pedestrian crash patterns were dependent upon human -drivel and pedestrian- characteristics including gender, age, and drinking conditions. Second, other contributing factors included vehicle, roadway geometric, weather, and hour of day characteristics. Third, seasonal effect was not contributive to crash patterns. Finally, the application of the Ordered Logit Model facilitated the ordered severity level analysis of the pedestrian crash data. This paper concludes that conventional wisdom on the pedestrian crash characteristics is largely truthful. However, this conclusion is limited only to the data used in this analysis, and further research is required for its generalization.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Automotive Engineers
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• v.19 no.6
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• pp.61-67
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• 2011

The cooling module needs enough space (or distance) from hood to absorb the energy from any pedestrian collision. Downsized cooling module for pedestrian protection is important to reduce the severity of pedestrian injury. When a vehicle collision happens, the downsized cooling module is required to reduce the risk of injury to the upper legs of adults and the heads of children. In this study, the performance of cooling module to cool the engine was investigated under 25% height reduction. The heat dissipation and pressure drop characteristics have been experimentally studied with the variation of coolant flow rate, air inlet velocity and A/C operation ON/OFF for the downsized cooling module. The results indicated that the cooling performance was about 94% level compared to that of the conventional cooling module. Therefore, we checked that the cooling module had good performance, and expected that the cooling module could meet the same cooling performance as conventional cooling module through optimization of components efficiency.

• Archives of Craniofacial Surgery
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• v.21 no.5
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• pp.294-300
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• 2020

Background: Mandibular fractures are one of the most common types of facial fractures, the treatment of which can be delayed due to the severity of the trauma resulting in an increase of complications; thus, early evaluation of trauma severity at the time of visit is important. In South Korea, trauma patients are triaged and intensively treated in designated regional trauma centers. This study aimed to analyze the relationship between trauma severity and mandibular fracture patterns. Methods: A medical records review was performed on patients who visited the regional trauma center at our hospital for mandibular fracture between 2009 and 2018. Epidemiologic data and mandibular fracture patterns were analyzed and compared with the conventional facial injury severity scale (FISS). Results: Among 73 patients, 51 were classified as non-severe trauma patients and 22 as severe trauma patients. A higher trauma severity was associated with older age (odds ratio [OR], 1.164; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.057-1.404) and lower risk was associated with fractures located in the angle (OR, 0.001; 95% CI, 0-0.022), condylar process (OR, 0.001; 95% CI, 0-0.28), and coronoid process (OR, 0.004; 95% CI, 0-0.985). The risk was lower when the injury mechanism was a pedestrian traffic accident (OR, 0.004; 95% CI, 0-0.417) or fall (OR, 0.004; 95% CI, 0-0.663) compared with an in-car traffic accident. Higher FISS (OR, 1.503; 95% CI, 1.155-2.049) was associated with a higher trauma severity. The proposed model was found to predict the trauma severity better than the model using FISS (p< 0.001). Conclusion: Age, location of mandibular fractures, and injury mechanism showed significant relationships with the trauma severity. Epidemiologic data and patterns of mandibular fractures could predict the trauma severity better than FISS.