The aim of the article was to present an overview of experimental methods in impact biomechanics. The definition of impact biomechanics as a special branch combining engineering and medical sciences is provided, together with a conceptual scheme of biomechanics research in the pipeline. Various sources of biomechanical data are briefly described, such as animal testing, volunteer testing, cadaver and anthropomorphic test devices (dummy) testing and numerical simulations. Advantages and drawbacks of each of these information sources are discussed. Many challenges related to conducting biomechanical experiments and simulations are indicated. However, there is a great potential for utilizing the accomplishments of impact biomechanics not only in industrial applications, but also in the practice of road accident reconstruction. 

The article discusses the biomechanical criteria that may be useful in the quantitative analysis of injuries to road accident participants, e.g. in terms of head, neck, chest, femur and tibia injuries. These criteria are determined on the basis of the analysis of the time characteristics of acceleration, velocity, displacement, as well as forces and moments of forces (different depending on the type of indicator). The discussion of the criteria in this article is based on examples of safety standards in force in Europe, including Regulation 80 of the UN/ECE concerning crash tests in M2, M3 vehicles, Regulation 129 concerning the tests of child seats and the British standard GMRT2100 concerning the safety of passengers in rail transport. The results of simulation tests done by the author of the article were also taken into account. Some of the injury assessment indicators presented will be implemented into the MULTIBODY human body model in the V-SIM program.

The aim of the article was to provide a thorough description of CYBID Multibody Pedestrian model in keeping with its implementation in the commercial version of V-SIM 5.0. reconstruction software. The description of the model geometry and the human body generator is provided together with a detailed explanation of the contact algorithm implemented in V-SIM 5.0. New functionalities including the script interface developed in the process of the pedestrian model implementation in V-SIM 5.0 and extended human body models supporting injury analysis are briefly discussed. Perspective for further development of Multibody models in future V-SIM versions is also presented

The article presents various models of pedestrian crash test dummies, grouping them by their applicability: vehicle manufacture or road accident reconstruction. Selected experiments in the latter area using dummies of pedestrians are presented. The second part of the article is devoted to a description of a PRIMUS dummy – a relatively new product on the market. The structure of the dummy is presented, and studies verifying the dynamic response of the dummy in a collision with pedestrian are summarized. The application of the dummy in road accident reconstruction and R&D experiments are presented.

Increasingly, evidence of a road accident includes video recordings that provide useful material in the work of an expert witness. The analysis of the recorded course of the event is the most reliable basis for accident reconstruction, including the speed and actions taken by the participants. An effective use of a video recording for a road accident analysis usually requires at least its initial processing, e.g. framing and removing unnecessary parts. In order to improve the quality of the source video material in terms of mapping the geometric features of the objects recorded on the film, it is necessary to correct the distortion, followed by orthorectification. It is also often necessary to improve the image by applying filters to the video recording. These operations are possible with the use of Photorect 2.0, which is discussed in the article. The transformed video,  post-processed by means of perspective effect elimination, cropping and frame extraction was used for the preparation of a computer simulation of the event, synchronized with this film.

The article presents the results of a simulation of real pedestrian-car accidents in the new version of the V-Sim 5.0 program. The new multibody pedestrian model was employed in the simulations. The analysis covers the effect of individual model parameters as well as the parameters of pedestrian’s motion and the relative pedestrian-vehicle position at the initial moment of the collision on the obtained results including the range of the pedestrian’s being thrown onto the vehicle and his longitudinal recoil are analyzed.