This paper prioritizes and statistically describes precrash scenarios as a basis for the identification of crash avoidance functions enhanced or enabled by vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication technology. Pre-crash scenarios depict vehicle movements and dynamics as well as the critical event immediately prior to the crash. The prioritization of pre-crash scenarios is based on the societal harm from persons who were injured in pre-crash scenarios involving at least two vehicles. The crash must also involve at least one light vehicle (e.g., passenger car, van, minivan, sport utility vehicle, or pickup truck) with a gross vehicle weight rating less than 4,536 kg. This paper also introduces a framework that serves to connect pre-crash scenarios to crash avoidance functions and provides information that will enable the identification of appropriate functional requirements, performance specifications, objective test procedures, and initial system effectiveness benchmarks. The framework incorporates crash statistics about the driving environment, contributing and causal factors, and kinematic information. In addition, time-to-collision equations for each precrash scenario are derived to identify key variables that must be measured to recognize and assess the crash threat of driving conflicts. Crash statistics are obtained from national crash databases including the 2004-2008 General Estimates System, the National Motor Vehicle Crash Causation Survey, and the Event Data Recorder database. A set of ten pre-crash scenarios are identified as a priority for the development of V2V-based safety applications. These priority scenarios are arranged into five crash avoidance packages that consist of rear-end, lane change, opposite direction, junction crossing, and left turn across path/opposite direction crash countermeasures. This paper delineates the priority pre-crash scenarios and maps them to V2V-based safety applications under development.