Within the continuous development of automotive safety and increasingly stringent crash regulations under the Vision Zero initiative, physical crash testing remains essential for assessing occupant injury risk. This study focuses on the evaluation of occupant dynamics in full-overlap frontal collisions, based on real crash tests. Key parameters influencing injury severity, including impact speed, seat belt usages, and occupant anthropometry, were analyzed to identify worst-case scenarios. Frontal crash test protocols from regulatory and consumer programs were included in the analysis. Physical tests were conducted according to FMVSS 208 using Hybrid III 50th percentile male and 5th percentile female dummies. Both belt-restrained and unrestrained (unbelted) conditions were considered. Numerical simulations using LS-DYNA are used as a complementary tool to support and extend the interpretation of the experimental findings, particularly in assessing the influence of impact speed, seat belt usage, and occupant anthropometry on injury metrics. The results evaluate the factors with the greatest impact on injury risk and demonstrate the importance of physical frontal crash tests in the evaluation of the occupant protection. All experimental tests were carried out at IAV Vehicle Safety.

Starting from the statistical data in the field, according to which the most vulnerable road users are pedestrians, with the highest number of deaths, the present research deals with the problem of the impact between a vehicle and a pedestrian. The main purpose of this study is to carry out a comparative analysis on the determination of kinematic parameters in the case of vehicle – pedestrian collision. An influencing factor on the value of the kinematic parameters and the pedestrian trajectory following the collision is represented by the front profile of the vehicle. For the virtual modeling of this impact, different frontal profiles of the vehicle were considered, but with the same characteristics of the pedestrian and the same impact speed. The comparative analysis of the vehicle – pedestrian impact takes into account three different types of vehicle in terms of the frontal profile shape, namely: almost flat and vertical profile, high profile and low profile. The determination of the projection distances of the pedestrian following the impact was carried out by two methods.

The proposed synchronized multi-sensor framework provides an experimental approach for integrated crash assessment by combining vehicle structural response, restraint-system loading, and occupant biomechanical measurements within a common temporal reference. The experimental campaign comprised two full-scale crash events involving three vehicles and six Hybrid III 50th percentile male ATD exposures: a front-to-rear vehicle collision with standard occupant positioning and a full-frontal rigid-barrier impact with forward-leaning out-of-position (OOP) occupants. Triaxial thoracic accelerations, seat belt forces, and B-pillar accelerations were recorded simultaneously using synchronized data acquisition systems. The frontal OOP configuration produced the highest longitudinal (X-axis) thoracic acceleration, approximately 62 g, and the highest measured local belt-segment force, 9.80 kN, whereas the rear-impacted vehicle exhibited the highest local B-pillar acceleration. These configuration-specific observations demonstrate the capability of the proposed framework to characterize structural, restraint-system, and occupant responses simultaneously across different full-scale crash configurations.