Patent ID: 8265831

Claim:
A method for determining a crash condition of a vehicle comprising the steps of: sensing crash acceleration in a first direction substantially parallel to a front-to-rear axis of the vehicle at a substantially central vehicle location and providing a first acceleration signal indicative thereof; sensing crash acceleration in a second direction substantially parallel to a side-to-side axis of the vehicle and providing a second acceleration signal indicative thereof; sensing crash acceleration in the first direction at two locations remote from the substantially central vehicle location and near opposite sides of the vehicle and providing acceleration signals indicative thereof; determining a transverse crash evaluation value functionally related to the second acceleration signal; determining remote crash evaluation values functionally related to the acceleration signals at the remote locations; comparing the determined transverse crash evaluation value as a function of the determined remote evaluation values against an associated threshold; and determining a crash condition of the vehicle in response to (a) the comparison and (b) the first acceleration signal wherein said step of determining remote crash evaluation values functionally related to the acceleration signals at the remote locations includes the step of determining a sum of moving averages of acceleration in said first direction at the remote locations.