Characteristic research of lower extremity injuries in elderly pedestrians during collisions

The aim of this research is to study the trend of pedestrian lower extremity injuries during vehicle-pedestrian collisions.

In this study, pedestrian's age, collision angle and pedestrian's position are considered influencing factors. Nine experiments using a novel lower extremity mechanical model are designed with the orthogonal experiment method.

Under the same collision angle, collisions in the left and right positions caused more serious tibia injuries than the middle position. As for the collision angle, the tibial injury at +45° is more significant than the tibial injury at -45°, and the injury of oblique collisions is slightly greater than that at 0°. Moreover, tibial injury is more sensitive to research variables than femoral injury. When the collision angle and position are changed, the difference ratio of tibia stress is by 483.2% higher than that of femur stress. The axial force and bending moment of the quadriceps tendon in the left-position collision reach peak values, which are 3.83 kN and 165.98 Nm, respectively. The peak quadriceps tendon axial force is captured with the collision angle of -45°, and the peak quadriceps tendon bending moment is obtained with a collision angle of +45°.

The effects of differences in impact position and angle on lower extremity injury in the elderly were analyzed, and the results of this study can be used as a reference for research on lower extremity protection.