Mitigating bodily injury in vehicle collisions by reducing the change in momentum resulting therefrom

Abstract

Methods, systems, and computer program products are described herein for automatic collision avoidance and/or bodily injury mitigation. For example, a vehicle determines the optimal action(s) to take to avoid a collision or reduce the bodily injury of occupant(s) of the vehicle in the event that the vehicle determines that the collision is unavoidable. The vehicle performs action(s) that reduce the change of momentum experienced by occupant(s) thereof as a result of the collision. The actions are based on various characteristics of the vehicles that are to be involved in the collision. Such actions may comprise accelerating into and causing a collision with vehicle(s) in front of the vehicle at or around the same time at which a further vehicle rear-ends the vehicle. The system processes several scenarios in real-time (taking into changes of velocity of the vehicles involved) to determine the scenario that best mitigates the change of momentum.