Establishment of a weighted injury criterion for evaluation of multiple types of head severe injuries for vulnerable road users

Abstract

Abstract In traffic accidents, multiple head injury types often occur simultaneously and cause severe brain injury for vulnerable road users (VRUs). In this study, a head-weighted injury criterion was developed to assess the risk of severe brain injury considering various injury types. Firstly, 50 in-depth accidents were reconstructed using a high-precision reconstruction method to reconstruct the overall kinematic response and head injury severity of VRUs and analyze the correlation between various head injury criteria and severe brain injury. Then, four injury criteria were selected that correlated well with severe brain injury, namely HIC15, angular acceleration, coup pressure, and maximum principal strain (MPS). Finally, weighted head injury criteria (WIC4) of severe injuries were established based on the four selected injury criteria, and the correlation between WIC4 and severe brain injury was validated based on the area under of receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROC) and the reconstructed results of another 10 selected accidents. The results showed that WIC4 had a good predictive capability for both severe and non-severe brain injury cases, and the AUROC was 0.983, which was significantly higher than that of the single head injury criterion. This study further improved the correlation between head injury criteria and severe brain injury.