Power Wheels Magazine A Notch Above
Completing the paperwork after a vehicular collision can be quite tedious, especially if one or both parties intend to file an insurance claim afterwards. Usually, the required documents include photocopies of the driver’s licenses, Land Transportation Office (LTO) Official Receipts and Certificates of Registration (OR/CR), and insurance certificate of coverage (COC) of both vehicles involved in the collision, photos of the accident and the damaged portions of the vehicles, repair estimates from an accredited service workshop, and most importantly, the police report, or a duly accomplished and notarized affidavit, in the absence of a police report.
Ouch! Gathering and completing the required documents and photos to report a vehicular collision, even if it’s a minor one, is a tedious and time-consuming process.
Gathering all these required documents may soon become a lot easier thanks to technology. General Motors (GM) has filed a patent application the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for a vehicle system that automatically exchanges driver information after a crash, describing a vehicle-to-vehicle communication system designed to make the aftermath of a crash safer, faster, and less stressful for drivers. Instead of requiring the involved motorists to get out of their vehicles, gather paperwork, and manually exchange insurance information on the side of the road, the proposed GM patent would allow the two vehicles involved in a collision to automatically identify each other and share relevant information.
GM has filed a patent for a vehicle system that makes vehicles automatically communicate with one another after a crash and exchange relevant information needed for the collision report.
Utilizing Equipment Already in Use
The proposed GM system would use a collision detection module with a variety of onboard sensors, as well as a vehicle database. Those sensors could include LiDAR, radar, visual cameras, and other equipment already in use for advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) or in-vehicle safety systems. When a vehicle detects a potential collision, the system will use the onboard sensors to determine if another vehicle was involved. The system may use image processing to identify a nearby object as a vehicle, while also checking details such as vehicle make, model, and color.
By adding a collision detection module, the proposed GM system can make use of the existing ADAS, LiDAR, radar, cameras, sensors, and other available hardware onboard.
If a collision is detected, the vehicle can broadcast a collision message out to nearby vehicles, and if another vehicle sends a matching collision message, the system can verify that the two vehicles were involved in the same collision. The GM patent proposes the use of vehicle-to-vehicle, vehicle-to-infrastructure, vehicle-to-people, and cellular-based communication to send and receive these messages. Most of these technologies are already existing and in use, thus, making the application of the proposed system easily implementable with just a few minor tweaks and programming.
In the event of a crash, the vehicle will automatically send a collision report to other nearby vehicles and match the one it has collided with.
Generating Collision Reports Automatically
After the vehicles are matched, the proposed system can exchange encrypted collision reports. These reports may include info such as the driver’s insurance, license, vehicle registration, crash time, location, and other relevant details. The drivers may then be prompted to exchange the report with each other, as well as be able to view the information from the other vehicle after it is decrypted. The report can also be forwarded to the computer system inside the responding police officer’s patrol car to generate the required police report.
The collision report can be forwarded to the responding police car to generate the required police report and eliminate lengthy questioning, heated arguments and tedious documentation.
Patent Number US 12657968B2 was filed by GM on November 7, 2024 and was published by the USPTO on June 16, 2026, listing four Canadian engineers – Mohammad Naserian, Daniel Xie, Patrick Giancarlo Gabriel DiGioacchino, and Utkarsh Saini – as the inventors. The proposed system can easily be adapted to GM’s OnStar connected vehicle services that already provides 24/7 safety, navigation, roadside assistance and in-vehicle Wi-Fi to subscribers who drive Chevrolet, Buick, Cadillac and GMC models in the U.S.A.
The proposed system could easily be adapted to GM’s OnStar connected vehicle system.
There’s no indication how long before the proposed system gets implemented in America but we’re pretty sure it will take a long, long time before it reaches the Philippines. So, in the meantime, we have to contend with the manual system of gathering these necessary accident documents. Better still, to be free of the hassle of completing these documents, drive safely and avoid vehicular accidents and collisions.
