Methods and systems for deterring rear collisions and/or mitigating the damage caused therefrom are provided. When the host vehicle is slowing down, coming to a stop, or stopped, and the system senses that an external vehicle in the rear is approaching at an unsafe speed, an external warning system can be activated to attempt to gain the attention of the driver of the external vehicle. If the external vehicle continues to approach at an unsafe speed such that a collision seems likely or inevitable, a brace sequence within the host vehicle can be activated to reduce injury to occupants of the host vehicle.

An impact detection system is disclosed for detecting and identifying an object colliding with a vehicle. The impact detection system comprises a sensor arrangement arranged to measure a characteristic of an impact of the object against the vehicle, a trigger determiner associated with the sensor arrangement for determining whether the characteristic of the 5 impact is greater than a predefined threshold value, and an image capturing device arranged to capture an image of the object. The system is arranged to automatically make the captured image available for inspection in response to the trigger determiner determining that the characteristic of the impact is greater than the predefined threshold value so that the object in the image can be identified substantially in real-time.

Disclosed is a device for controlling an airbag, which includes a first sensor unit configured to detect surrounding vehicle information using at least one sensor, a second sensor unit configured to detect collision information of an ego-vehicle using at least one sensor, and a controller configured to calculate a target relative velocity and time to collision (TTC) based on sensing information detected by the first sensor unit, determine a collision risk of the ego-vehicle based on the calculated target relative velocity and TTC, maintain a threshold for airbag deployment by default or adjust the threshold, based on a result of the determination of the collision risk of the ego-vehicle, compare the maintained or adjusted threshold with the collision information received from the second sensor unit, and control whether to deploy the airbag based on whether the collision information is the maintained or adjusted threshold or more.

A method for the dynamic fixation of an occupant wearing a seatbelt on a vehicle seat involves determining a lateral acceleration of the vehicle and a road course ahead of the vehicle. The seatbelt is tightened with a predetermined belt force for a predetermined period of time before entering a bend having a certain curvature.

In order to detect a vehicle accident in which a vehicle and an object crash into one another, wherein a motion variable assigned to the collision is so low that at least one active occupant protection system provided for accidents in the vehicle is not activated by the crash, it is provided, with respect to the collision event, that signals and/or data formed by sensors of the vehicle are processed in such a manner that the signals and/or data are filtered, feature data are formed based on the filtered signals and/or data, and the collision event is assigned to a classification in a classification database based on the feature data.

Systems and methods for crash determination in accordance with embodiments of the invention are disclosed. In one embodiment, a vehicle telematics device includes a processor and a memory storing a crash determination application, wherein the processor, on reading the crash determination application, is directed to obtain sensor data from at least one sensor installed in a vehicle, calculate peak resultant data based on the sensor data, where the peak resultant data describes the acceleration of the vehicle over a first time period, generate crash score data based on the peak resultant data and a set of crash curve data for the vehicle, where the crash score data describes the likelihood that the vehicle was involved in a crash based on the characteristics of the vehicle and the sensor data, and provide the obtained sensor data when the crash score data exceeds a crash threshold to a remote server system.

A method and a device for a motor vehicle of adapting safety mechanisms of a vehicle safety system. The method includes acquiring (s101) data to create a representation (113) of a current vehicle surrounding (110), comparing (s102) the created representation to pre-stored representations of vehicle surroundings, with a risk assessment measure (R) associated with it which stipulates whether to trigger the safety mechanism of the vehicle safety system. If there is correspondence between the created representation and one of the pre-stored representations; detecting (s103) a vehicle behavior associated with the current surrounding, and determining (s104), whether to adjust triggering of the safety mechanism associated with the at least one risk assessment measure of the pre-stored representation of the current vehicle surrounding for which there is a match with the created representation.

A method and system may identify vehicle collisions in real-time or at least near real-time based on statistical data collected from previous vehicle collisions. The statistical data may be used to train a machine learning model for identifying whether a portable computing device is in a vehicle collision based on sensor data from the portable computing device. The machine learning model may be trained based on a first subset of sensor data collected from vehicle trips involved in vehicle collisions and a second subset of sensor data collected from vehicle trips not involved in vehicle collisions. When a current set of sensor data is obtained from a portable computing device in a vehicle, the current set of sensor data is compared to the machine learning model to determine whether the portable computing device is in a vehicle involved in a vehicle collision.

A method and system may identify vehicle collisions in real-time or at least near real-time based on statistical data collected from previous vehicle collisions. A user's portable computing device may obtain sensor data from sensors in the portable computing device and compare the sensor data to a statistical model indicative of a vehicle collision, where the statistical model includes sensor data characteristics which correspond to the vehicle collision. Each sensor data characteristic may have a threshold value, the portable computing device may compare a value for the sensor data characteristic to the threshold value. If the portable computing device identifies a vehicle collision based on the comparison, the portable communication device may display collision information. Further, notifications may be sent to emergency contacts and/or emergency personnel to provide assistance to the user.

A collision detection system has one or more sensors for determining an instantaneous velocity of a vehicle. A computer is interfaced to the one or more sensors. The computer obtains the instantaneous velocity of the vehicle from the one or more sensors. The computer is operatively configured to execute software that operates the computer to iteratively calculate an acceleration of the vehicle as a rate of change of the instantaneous velocity over a period of time. The software declares a collision when the acceleration is greater than a predetermined value (e.g. 1.1 g) or the acceleration is less than a predetermined negative value (e.g. 1.1 g). In another embodiment, the microprocessor declares a collision when the acceleration/deceleration or the turning angle or the turning radius values exceed factory setting for the vehicle. The software determines the severity of collision based on the magnitude of deviation from the predetermined values.