Patent ID: 8577592

Claim:
A method for use with a vehicle collision warning system, comprising the steps of: (a) receiving one or more reading(s) from a target vehicle sensor and retrieving one or more previously stored value(s) from an electronic memory device including a host vehicle response value (R HOST ), a gap setting value (G SETTING ), or both (R HOST ) and (G SETTING ), wherein (R HOST ) is an estimated deceleration capability of a host vehicle based on driver braking and (G SETTING ) is a distance between a host vehicle and a target vehicle that influences when a warning is sent to the driver; (b) using the reading(s) in conjunction with the previously stored value(s) to solve a unified collision warning algorithm with a control module, wherein the unified collision warning algorithm detects a potential collision without continuously switching between different algorithms in response to dynamic conditions; and (c) sending a warning to a driver if the unified collision warning algorithm determines that a potential collision exists.