Guangzhou Honda conducted China’s first crash test to measure a vehicle's impact on different parts of the body in a vehicle-pedestrian collision on Sunday in the Tianjin-based China Automobile Technology Research Center.

The test is aimed at identifying which parts of a vehicle cause the most serious injuries and developing new safety technologies to reduce pedestrian injuries in the event of a collision.

The test used a Honda Accord running at 40 kilometer per hour and a full-scale pedestrian test dummy developed by Honda known as POLAR III.

POLAR III has instruments to measure the potential level of injury throughout the body in a collision. Compared to previous dummies, known as POLAR I and II, the third generation POLAR III gives a more faithful reproduction of the lower back and upper legs, which are especially vulnerable in collisions between pedestrians and vehicles.

The bumper and hood of the car in the test also used a special material designed to soften the impact of a crash on the human body.

“We hope the test will call on more attention on protecting pedestrian’s safety,” a Honda’s manager in charge of the test said.

73, 484 people were killed in traffic accidents in China in 2008, and 26 percent of them pedestrians, according to the statistics published by the Ministry of Public Security. That figure soars in big cities like Beijing and Guangzhou, however, where roughly 40 percent of all traffic accident fatalities are pedestrians.