Patent ID: 7151467

Claim:
A vehicular communications apparatus mounted on an own vehicle for radio communications with other vehicles, comprising: a memory configured to store information on at least one of a point difficult of a driving operation, an intersection, and a junction; an own vehicle information detector configured to detect information on a position, a velocity, and a moving direction of the own vehicle; an approach decider configured to decide whether the own vehicle has approached the point, intersection, or junction stored in the memory, based on information detected by the own vehicle information detector; an other vehicle information request provider configured to provide requests to other vehicles for information on positions, velocities, and moving directions of the other vehicles, as the own vehicle is decided to have approached the point, intersection, or junction stored in the memory by the approach decider; a calculator configured to calculate relative positions, relative velocities, and relative moving directions between the own vehicle and the other vehicles, respectively, based on information detected by the own vehicle information detector and information returned from the other vehicles in response to the requests from the other vehicle information request provider; a communication opponent searching decider configured to search for, and to decide, other vehicles to be opponents of radio communications, based on information calculated by the calculator; a communication opponent changer configured to change over communication opponents to the other vehicles searched for and decided by the communication opponent searching decider; and a radio communicator configured for radio communications with the communication opponents changed over by the communication opponent changer.