In the accident reconstruction literature, there are several approaches available for the determination of the energy absorbed during the impact phase of a vehicle collision. They are based on different principles and various simplifying assumptions. That is why the vehicle pre-impact speed computed from energy balance may have different values depending on the method used. The topic of this presentation will be to compare selected approaches for absorbed energy determination and to list their differences and similarities. Numerical computations using existing frontal barrier collision data will serve to verify the validity of the methodologies and to comment on their applicability for accident reconstruction.