Do you know the shocking fact that about 7,200 to 7,500 pedestrians lost their lives, while more than 70,000 people suffered from injuries in road accidents in 2025 in the United States? It is due to the fact that pedestrian accidents usually lead to serious injuries since there is no protection for pedestrians.
It is common to get injuries after a crash. But what happens to the body when it is hit by a vehicle? And what can you do during this situation to protect yourself?
Let’s dig deeper and sort out what kinds of injuries come up most often after a pedestrian accident.
How Impact Speed Determines Survival
The velocity of the vehicle is by far the most influential factor in pedestrian accident results. The American Automobile Association Foundation for Traffic Safety carried out a study that made the connection between impact velocity and pedestrian death probability using findings that are not contained in generalized information.
That connection is explained by the way kinetic energy works. Kinetic energy rises with the square of velocity, so if you double your speed, then the energy goes way up, like it quadruples, and the impact force follows that. A vehicle moving at 40 mph doesn’t really hit “twice as hard” compared to 20 mph.
It hits about four times as hard instead. And a human body can only take so much energy before things start failing structurally, like in bone, in soft tissue, and also in internal organs. Speed also decides what kind of thing happens to a pedestrian thrown away from the vehicle, rolled under it, or hit by secondary bits such as the hood, the windshield frame, and the roof edge. Those parts produce their own, pretty specific injury patterns.
The Three-Phase Impact Sequence
The Law Offices of Richard R. Kennedy say that pedestrian accidents can be especially tragic since victims are afforded no protection from the impact of a crash. The collisions with passenger vehicles follow a predictable three-phase sequence that helps explain the specific injury distributions observed in trauma studies.
In most pedestrian incidents, the first big impact happens when the vehicle’s bumper catches the lower body, and then you get leg fractures, knee injuries, or sometimes a pelvis together with femur fractures. When the vehicle is higher, like an SUV or truck, the collision tends to drive harsher thigh injuries and pelvic trauma too, and the amount of bleeding can be way more.
In the second impact, the pedestrian’s upper body ends up striking the hood or the windshield, and it can lead to chest, abdomen, and head injuries like rib breaks, damage to internal organs, skull fractures, and traumatic brain injuries. This step is often the main reason fatal pedestrian injuries happen.
The third impact shows up when the pedestrian makes contact with the ground, and that can also trigger extra head, shoulder, and abrasion injuries, kind of like cascading effects. In some high-speed crashes the victim can be run over too, which brings on severe crush injuries, and because of that the risk of death stays very high.
Specific Injury Types and Their Clinical Significance
Traumatic brain injuries are pretty much the top reason people die or end up with long-term disability after pedestrian accidents. When the head hits a vehicle, or even just the pavement, the damage can span from concussion-type injuries all the way to severe brain harm.
Some “moderate” incidents can still result in ongoing issues like thinking problems, conduct changes, and slower information processing, and those effects might not show up right away; they can appear later, as time passes.
Lower extremity fractures show up as the most common, non-fatal injuries in pedestrian accidents. The so-called tibial “bumper fractures” are frequently used in forensic work to figure out impact height and the whole crash dynamics. As for femur fractures, they are especially dangerous, because the internal blood loss can be substantial and not immediately visible, even though it’s right there.
Damage to internal organs of the body such as the liver, spleen, or bowel is difficult to detect immediately following a pedestrian accident. The bleeding may get worse in a matter of minutes or hours, even though the patient looks stable. There is also a possibility that high-speed accidents will affect the aorta.
Spinal damage in pedestrian accidents occurs primarily on the cervical and thoracic segments, which are usually associated with flexion–extension trauma sustained from striking the vehicle’s front portion or windshield. Such traumas cause fractures, dislocation of vertebrae, and spinal cord damage and, in extreme cases, may even result in paralysis, alongside disability and high costs of medical treatment and loss of income.
Age-Related Injury Vulnerability
Pedestrian injuries are likely to be more severe for children and elderly pedestrians because of differences in physiology that cause injury outcomes to vary for each group. The larger head size and high center of gravity make injury mechanisms very different in children than in adults.
Senior citizens are more susceptible to accidents involving pedestrians since their bones have lower bone density, their cardiovascular fitness is poor, and they have less resistance to blood loss. Based on statistics from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, senior citizens make up 18% of all deaths among pedestrians and are at higher risk of sustaining a fatal injury when compared to younger victims.
After a Pedestrian Crash: Medical and Legal Steps
If struck by a car, one should immediately visit the emergency room, regardless of the presence of any pain since the body’s rush of adrenaline can suppress any injuries. Conditions such as traumatic brain injuries are often accompanied by delayed symptoms. A full assessment of trauma, involving CT scans of several areas of the body, is advisable.
According to legal standards, pedestrian accident claims usually target the auto liability insurance of the driver who caused the accident. Pedestrians who walk on the road face no risk of shared fault, but specific cases will determine fault based on crosswalk use, traffic signals, and whether the pedestrian should have been expected to be there.
The damages claim includes all emergency medical treatment costs and ongoing medical costs and lost income and future earning potential and pain and suffering and wrongful death damages for family members who survive it.
The medical records, which start from the crash day forward, serve as the primary evidence for proving the damages claim.
