Patent ID: 7245231

Claim:
A method of collision avoidance comprising: receiving a signal indicative of a potential collision of a vehicle in a given directional location; and generating a haptic collision alert corresponding to the given directional location in response to the signal, wherein the haptic collision alert includes vibrating a seat pan of a vehicle driver seat in the vehicle and the haptic collision alert indicates the urgency of the potential collision by varying both a rate of vibration and an intensity of vibration; wherein the seat pan is partitioned into a three by three matrix having a front row positioned near the front of the driver seat, a rear row positioned near the rear of the driver seat and a mid row positioned between the front row and the rear row, each row having a left matrix location positioned near the left side of the driver seat, a right matrix location positioned near the right side of the driver seat and a center matrix location positioned between the left matrix location and the right matrix location; and the location of the vibration in the seat pan includes one or more of the matrix locations; whereby a vehicle driver receives an indication of the possible collision direction by the location of the vibration in the seat pan.