Characteristics of TRL Pedestrian Legform Impactor and Flexible Pedestrian Legform Impactor in Car-Front Impact Tests

Pedestrian protection is one of the key topics of discussion in the area of vehicle safety legislation in Europe and Japan. Leg injuries are the most common injuries found in non-fatal pedestrian accidents. The EC regulation and Euro NCAP are evaluating pedestrian leg protection performance in current vehicles. The TRL legform impactor is specified by the EC regulation, where Phase 1 took effect during 2005 and a draft phase 2 is scheduled to take effect in 2013. The global technical regulation (GTR) pedestrian protection test protocol was made basically using the TRL legform impactor. However, a flexible legform impactor has been under development. When the flexible legform impactor development is fully completed and evaluated, it is possible that both legform impactors may be determined to be useful in the GTR. Thus, the objective of this study is to investigate the characteristics of pedestrian leg protection performance of the frontal area of current vehicles using the TRL legform impactor and the flexible legform impactor. Different types of vehicles (sedan, sport utility vehicle (SUV), height wagon, and 1 box car) were used. The center of the bumper and center of the side members (i.e., the vehicles main longitudinal beams) were selected as impact locations for the legform impactors tests. This paper discusses an equivalence of injury assessment between the TRL legform impactor and flexible legform impactor. The full text of this paper may be found at: http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/pdf/esv/esv21/09-0206.pdf For the covering abstract see ITRD E145407.