Patent ID: 8760276

Claim:
A collision detector detecting a situation where a subject vehicle is likely to come into contact with an external object, the collision detector comprising: a subject area defining portion which defines a subject area including an enter-determination area and an exist-determination area, the enter-determination area being defined to determine that the external object entering therein is likely to come into contact with the subject vehicle, the exist-determination area being defined to determine that the external object existing therein is likely to come into contact with the subject vehicle; an information obtaining portion which obtains an information about a movement vector of the external object; a first determining portion which determines whether the external object moves into the enter-determination area based on the information about the movement vector; a second determining portion which determines whether the external object exists in the exist-determination area; an output portion which executes a collision avoidance control in order to avoid a situation where the subject vehicle is likely to come into contact with the external object when the external object comes into the enter-determination area or when the external object exists in the exist-determination area; a speed determining portion which determines, based on the obtained information about the movement vector, whether the external object is a high-speed moving object of which moving speed is not less than a reference speed or a low-speed moving object of which moving speed is less than the reference speed, wherein the first determining portion determines whether the high-speed moving object moves into the enter-determination area, and a second determining portion determines whether the low-speed moving object exists in the exist-determination area.