Crash discriminator responsive to early-crush and multiple-hit scenarios

摘要

In a system and method for controlling actuation of a vehicle passenger safety device in response to an event possibly requiring actuation of the safety device, stored and rank-ordered values for received vehicle acceleration are used to generate a high-rank jerk measure (j.sub.H), a median-ranked acceleration value (a.sub.M) and a median-rank velocity measure (v.sub.M), while raw acceleration information is further used to generate an "event-based timer" or event- progress measure (t') . These measures (j.sub.H, a.sub.M, v.sub.M, t') are then used to generate a pair of event-identification measures (m.sub. 1, m.sub.2) useful in identifying two specific crash types for which specialized acceleration-based event-severity measures other than the default event-severity measure (m.sub.0) are best suited, specifically, where a series of negative jerks occurring relatively early in an event from a high transitory acceleration identify the occurrence of a sizable vehicle crush, or where a series of small jerks occurring relatively late in an event above a minimum velocity identifies a "multiple hit" event.