When pedestrians hit the bonnet or windscreen of a car, the impact is relatively soft.
The A-pillar or the engine (under the bonnet if there is not enough space between the two) are much more dangerous. Some cars have an active bonnet that can spring up to make room and give a softer landing.
A big factor is the height of the hood. When a smaller car hits a pedestrian, the hood is usually at or slightly under the pedestrian's center of mass, so the person will often roll up onto the hood. In a bigger car the hood is substantially above the center of mass so that a person cannot roll up --- they end up being forced under the car, which is much more dangerous.
> A modern car have deformation zones and angles for you to basically slide along -
That protects the people in the car, not those outside. Being hit by those deformation zones _will_ hurt.
There is one thing that makes modern cars less dangerous to pedestrians, and it's that when someone is hit by a car they are more likely to roll over the hood than under the wheel. HOWEVER this is only the case for sedans, and definitely NOT for SUVs. Now look at the proportion of SUVs in your area.
Some passenger cars also have a nifty feature where if an impact is detected, the hood on the side of the windshield is instantly propped up by some springs to provide a cushioning effect to whoever ends up on the hood.
I've seen it action when a guy who I was riding motorcycles with got hit on the side by a car (his fault, low speed, he was fine). My car also has the feature.
Obviously impossible if the hood's too high like with an SUV or pickup.
Unfortunately most people are selfish. Successful communities have put a price on being selfish, but a car gives the driver a certain level of anonymity.
An SUV hitting a pedestrian leads to bigger harm as the impact is higher up on the body. An SUV hitting a car leads to more injuries for the people in the car, as the weight of the SUV easily crushes the car windows and the frame around them.
Someone flung from a car won't damage you, but have a look at videos with crash test dummies, where a passenger in the back isn't wearing a seat belt. Them being flung in to the back of the driver's seat creates a huge impact.
The windshield won't be flung anywhere, but an electronic device will. Getting smashed in the face with an iPhone going 50Km/h is going to do some damage, rounded corners or not.
There is lots of ambiguity here. Depends on how you hit it, etc.
Roof landings don't always end well -- my Civic was trashed when a deer basically bounced up and collapsed my roof on the passenger side. My head would have been trashed as well had I been a passenger!
In general, if you cannot stop, hitting something head on is the best bet. Modern cars are designed handle that sort of collision with maximum passenger safety.
I believe EU regulations lead the way here. Basically, part of crash testing now involves impacts with pedestrians. My understanding is that the primary effect is on the front-end shape of vehicles. When striking a pedestrian, you want them to roll up onto the hood, into the windshield, to spread out the impact as much as possible (in area and time). More recently, systems like automated emergency braking have helped too.
Yeah, but landing on the round hood of a VW Polo vs being hit by the equivalent of a rolling brick wall makes a difference.
If you look at the formula for acceleration (a = ?v/?t) and acceleration force (F = a·m) the only two things we can truly influence here are speed (slower collisions are less dangerous) and time (collisions where the force transfer takes longer produce less force).
The latter is what makes the difference between getting hit with an cushion and an equally heavy rock. The same difference exists if you run against a brick wall and against an angled grassy hill (or: a bendy car hood). Not only will the elastic hood (and the roll) absorb part of the collision energy, the angle of the hood stretches the acceleration over longer time and reduces the force transfered on your body.
So if you get the choice as a cyclist, the choice is pretty clear.
It depends. At like 80kph, you're pretty screwed from the impact alone regardless of the vehicle. At 15kph, both are pretty survivable from an impact perspective. But if your survive the impact, the next question is where do you go? For big, raised, boxy vehicles, the answer is more often "under the car" than for cars with ramping low fronts. Having the weight of the car on you is dangerous by itself, even at 1kph.
Then of course there's the impact of the design on driver visibility and therefore accident frequency, especially if the pedestrian is a child, short, in a wheelchair, etc.
That "pop over the hood" theory is incorrect. If a car is moving at deadly speed you will not simply roll over a cars hood unharmed. You're still taking a 3000+ pound hit at 30 or more miles per hour, and you will most likely be embedded into the forward crush zone and subsequently flung forwards after the driver brakes in response.
At any rate, it's largely left-turning, night driving vehicles that are causing the increase in deaths in North America. These pedestrians are being struck at an angle rather than head on.
Smaller cars are more likely to throw you up and over - still dangerous, but not as dangerous as a direct inelastic hit. Smaller cars have better visibility of pedestrians and so are more likely to see and thus avoid pedestrians.
If you take a direct hit with even a tiny car at faster than 30mph you are dead. However smaller cars make it somewhat less likely you take that direct hit.
> Who is hitting their head (and on what) in this sentence? Clearly there are no such thing as soft cars when it comes to human skulls?
Pedestrians, struck by the vehicle. A typical hard pedestrian strike hits the legs, and the person flips over and hits their head on the hood. Modern vehicles ensure there is a significant gap between the hood and the engine, so the hood has room to deform and absorb the impact.
So yes, a large piece of thin sheet metal can be a relatively soft place for a skull to land.
70% more likely to be killed when struck by a larger car [1]. With a higher front face, pedestrians are struck in the chest, rather than the legs. Turns out, broken legs are a lot more survivable than damage to internal organs.
It's less about that sort of crash and more about small fender benders. You're likely to get much more bumper damage hitting a car at 5 mph in stop and go traffic in a modern car. (The upside being, of course, you're a lot less likely to snap a pedestrian's leg in a similar hit.)
The A-pillar or the engine (under the bonnet if there is not enough space between the two) are much more dangerous. Some cars have an active bonnet that can spring up to make room and give a softer landing.
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