Vehicular Injuries: When struck, adults are usually _________; whereas children get ____________ __________.

• A. Thrown; swept under/ran over
• B. Slid; crushed under/dragged away
• C. Pinned; burned
• D. Crushed; thrown aside

Answer: (A)

When a vehicle strikes a person, the immediate injury pattern tends to differ by age because of body size and proximity to the vehicle’s undercarriage. Adults have more momentum and mass, so the impact more often throws them off balance and projects them away from the point of impact, sometimes onto the hood, across the windshield, or onto the ground. Children, being smaller and lower to the ground, are more likely to be drawn under the vehicle or to be run over by the wheels before they can react.

This distinction helps in understanding forensic findings and reconstructing the event, since the distribution of injuries often mirrors this pattern: thrown for adults, swept under/ran over for children. Other patterns like being pinned or burned aren’t the standard immediate outcomes of the initial strike and are less representative of the typical sequence in these scenarios.