An Improved Method to Calculate the Time-to-Collision of Two Vehicles

Abstract

In order to improve vehicle safety, a interaction phase between primary and secondary safety systems has been defined. These systems use information provided by the primary safety systems to achieve both the primary and the secondary systems' objectives. It is essential to discriminate whether a collision is avoidable or not and to calculate the time available before the crash happens. This paper shows a method that improves on other simplified methods to calculate the time-to-collision (TTC) to provide a more accurate result that could be used in a collision avoidance system. © 2012 Springer Science+Business Media New York.