SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR DISCRIMINATING SHORT-PERIOD CRASHES

摘要

In a system (10) and method for controlling actuation of a vehicle passenger safety device in response to an event possibly requiring actuation of the safety device, a differential measure (m1(t)) is generated based on stored consecutive values for received vehicle acceleration information while a measure (m2(t)) correlated with the relative progress of the event is generated by selectively providing as an input to a first accumulator (24) either a weighted transitory value for received acceleration information (a(t)) whenever the transitory value is itself less than or equal to a first predetermined threshold value (x1), or a weighted alternative value, wherein the alternative value is itself equal to twice the first predetermined threshold value (x1) minus the transitory value. The differential measure (m1(t)) is thereafter combined with the progress measure (m2(t)) to effectively "damp" or weight the former as a function of event progress, whereupon the resulting combination is accumulated in a second accumulator (30) to obtain a measure (m3(t)) predictive of event severity, with the safety device being actuated when the predictive measure (m3(t)) exceeds a second predetermined threshold value (x2).