A method and an apparatus for estimating an expected reception quality in an interval of time for car-to-X communication including a receiving device for acquiring data packets and a memory, wherein the memory stores at least one empirically determined variable for reception patterns of data packets in a first interval of time, which variable indicates or can be used to determine how high the probability is of a data packet or n data packets being successfully received in a subsequent, second interval of time, wherein the apparatus is designed so that the reception pattern is determined for a first interval of time before the interval of time and the associated probability for the interval of time is read from the memory, wherein a warning message is generated and/or a transmission parameter and/or a functionality of a driver assistance function is/are changed on the basis of the probability.