Pedestrian fatalities remain a sobering global reality. The World Health Organization reports that road traffic accidents claim approximately 1.19 million lives every year, and more than half of these deaths involve vulnerable road users, including pedestrians, cyclists, and motorcyclists (Road Traffic Injuries, 2023, WHO).  As urban populations grow, mobility patterns change, and quieter electric vehicles become more common, the risks to pedestrians are increasing. While protecting vehicle occupants is also vital, this article will focus on passive pedestrian safety.

The chart below shows the distribution of serious pedestrian injuries across different body regions, classified as the Maximum Abbreviated Injury scale, level 2 or higher (MAIS2+) — with moderate to fatal injuries. While all regions of the body are at risk, the head and lower extremities account for the highest proportions of serious injuries, with the spine and thorax also representing significant shares. These findings highlight the need for vehicle designs and safety systems that target the most vulnerable areas to better protect pedestrians and reduce life-threatening outcomes.

To address these concerns, the automotive industry is placing a heightened focus on protecting those outside the vehicle. This shift has accelerated the development of pedestrian safety testing, regulations, and technologies that are transforming how vehicles are designed.

Pedestrian Safety Approaches

Effective pedestrian protection requires a two-fold approach: preventing collisions wherever possible and reducing injury severity when collisions occur. Vehicle technologies address this through two categories of safety systems: passive and active.

• Active Pedestrian Protection
  
  • Aims to prevent or mitigate the collision before it happens.
• Passive Pedestrian Protection
  
  • Focuses on minimizing injuries once contact with the vehicle has been made.

What is Active Pedestrian Safety Testing?

Active pedestrian protection focuses on how vehicles detect, predict, and respond to pedestrians in real-time to prevent or mitigate collisions. Unlike passive systems, which reduce injury once impact occurs, active systems use sensors and algorithms to avoid accidents altogether, marking a shift from mitigating harm to preventing it.

Our next article will explore active safety in depth, covering test modes and evaluation methods. Together, passive and active safety share two goals: avoiding collisions when possible and reducing injury severity when not, often the difference between life and death.

What is Passive Pedestrian Safety Testing?

At its core, passive pedestrian protection testing evaluates how a vehicle interacts with the human body in the event of a collision. Instead of focusing solely on occupants and crashworthiness, these tests simulate scenarios where a pedestrian encounters the front of a moving vehicle. 

Current Passive Pedestrian Protection Test Modes

• Headform Impacts (Adult & Child)
  
  • Measures head injury risk.
• Upper Legform
  
  • Simulates thigh, pelvis, and hip to assess femur injury.
• Lower Legform
  
  • Flex-PLI: Evaluates knee and lower leg injury.
  • aPLI: More biofidelic, assessing knee, upper, and lower leg injury.

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Why It Matters

Several global trends highlight why pedestrian safety is more urgent today than ever before:

• Rising Pedestrian Fatalities
  
  • Despite advances in vehicle technology, pedestrian fatalities have been increasing in many regions, with the U.S. recording its highest levels in more than 40 years (IIHS, 2023; Smart Growth America, 2024; CDC, 2025).
• Urbanization
  
  • More people are living and working in cities, where walking and micromobility are a part of daily life. (Smart Growth America, 2024)
• Electrification
  
  • Electric and hybrid vehicles are quieter, making it harder for pedestrians to hear them approaching. (Ritchie & Roser, 2024.; Fleury et al., 2016; WHO, 2023).
• Rise of Larger Vehicles
  
  • SUVs, trucks, and crossovers dominate sales in many markets. Their higher front ends and greater mass increase the severity of pedestrian impacts compared to smaller passenger cars. (Robinson et al., 2025; Illinois DOT, 2020).
• Increase in Distracted Driving
  
  • Smartphones and in-vehicle infotainment systems have made driver distraction a leading contributor to pedestrian crashes. Even brief lapses in attention, such as looking at a text, can have deadly consequences. (NHTSA, 2023; NHTSA, 2024).

Together, these factors mean that vehicles must account for a wider range of interactions beyond the inside of the vehicle.

The Shift in Automotive Safety Focus

Automotive safety has historically revolved around protecting occupants through innovations like seatbelts, airbags, and crumple zones. While these remain essential, the industry is now expanding the scope to ensure all road users are protected.

This shift reflects a more comprehensive view of road safety, one that recognizes that vehicles share space with many types of road users. Today, technology such as active hoods, energy absorbing bumpers, and integrated pedestrian detection systems work alongside traditional crash safety to protect people inside and outside the vehicle.

The Role of Regulations and Ratings

Regulatory bodies and consumer organizations are accelerating this focus by formalizing requirements for pedestrian protection:

• New Car Assessment Program (NCAP)
  
  • Consumer ratings that weigh pedestrian protection in vehicle scoring.
    
    • Programs in Europe, Australia, Japan, Latin America, Taiwan already apply these criteria, with the United States set to include them beginning in model year 2027.
• United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UN R127) and Global Technical Regulation (GTR No. 9)
  
  • International harmonized regulations that set performance criteria for headform and legform impacts.
• Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS 228-Proposed)
  
  • A pending U.S. regulation focused on pedestrian headform impact testing, currently under review through the Nation Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) rulemaking process.

These frameworks are not optional. For Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) competing globally, pedestrian safety performance is essential for compliance, brand reputation, and consumer confidence.

Conclusion

As fatalities to occupants inside the vehicle decrease, fatality rates for those outside the vehicle continue to increase. Pedestrian protection is becoming a global safety priority due to this reciprocal pattern. With urban growth, evolving mobility, and regulatory momentum, the industry is reimagining how vehicles interact with their environment.

The automotive world continues to innovate, and pedestrian safety is more than a compliance checkbox; it is a shared responsibility. Understanding why these tests matter is the first step toward creating safer roads for everyone.

For more insight into how MGA is contributing to this change, visit https://www.mgaresearch.com/capabilities/passive-pedestrian-protection.

References

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2017). Distracted walking, bicycling, and driving: A systematic review. Preventive Medicine, 105, 312–321. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5685949/

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2025, March 8). Pedestrian and overall road traffic crash deaths — United States and 27 other high-income countries, 2013–2022. MMWR. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, 74(8). https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/74/wr/mm7408a2.htm

Diversified Technical Systems. (n.d.). Pedestrian safety testing — headform and legform impactors [Infographic]. Diversified Technical Systems. https://dtsweb.com/

Edwards, M. (n.d.). Effects of large vehicles on pedestrian and pedal-cyclist injury severity (Report). Illinois Department of Transportation. https://idot.illinois.gov/content/dam/soi/en/web/idot/documents/transportation-system/reports/safety/itrcc/effects-of-large-vehicles-on-pedestrian-and-pedal-cyclist.pdf

Fleury, D., Delorme, B., & Gabaude, C. (2016). Effect of additional warning sounds on pedestrians’ auditory perception of hybrid electric vehicles. Accident Analysis & Prevention, 92, 248–254. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27639999

Governors Highway Safety Association. (2024, May 14). Early 2024 U.S. pedestrian fatalities up 48% from a decade ago. GHSA. https://www.ghsa.org/news/early-2024-us-pedestrian-fatalities-48-decade-ago

Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. (2023). Fatality facts 2023: Pedestrians. Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. https://www.iihs.org/research-areas/fatality-statistics/detail/pedestrians

London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine; Imperial College London. (2025, April 29). SUVs pose greater risk of death or serious injury to pedestrians and cyclists, study shows. Medical Xpress. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-04-suvs-pose-greater-death-injury.html

Morris, J. (2024, May 25). Are electric vehicles really more dangerous to pedestrians? Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesmorris/2024/05/25/are-electric-vehicles-really-more-dangerous-to-pedestrians

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. (2023). Distracted driving dangers and statistics. U.S. Department of Transportation. https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/distracted-driving

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. (2024). Distracted driving in 2023 [Research note]. U.S. Department of Transportation. https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/distracted-driving

Ritchie, H., & Roser, M. (2024, May 24). Annual deaths from road incidents, world [Graph]. Our World in Data. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/road-deaths-by-type?country=~World

Robinson, E., Edwards, P., Laverty, A., & Goodman, A. (2025). Do sports utility vehicles (SUVs) and light truck vehicles (LTVs) cause more severe injuries to pedestrians and cyclists than passenger cars in the case of a crash? Injury Prevention. Advance online publication. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40300846

Smart Growth America. (2024). Dangerous by design: An urgent call to prioritize pedestrian safety. Smart Growth America. https://www.smartgrowthamerica.org/signature-reports/dangerous-by-design

Staack, H., Labenski, V., & Liang, Y. (2024, July 3–4). Global thinking & harmonization: Quo vadis, VRU protection? [Conference presentation]. BGS Böhme & Gehring GmbH / carhs.training GmbH, Bergisch Gladbach, Germany

World Health Organization. (2023, December 13). Road traffic injuries. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/road-traffic-injuries

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