Motorcycle-drive assistance apparatus

A motorcycle-drive assistance apparatus that assists a motorcycle to follow another vehicle existing in front thereof, comprising:

• an object detector that detects said another vehicle;
• a road-surface gradient angle calculator that calculates a gradient angle of a road-surface on which the motorcycle is traveling;
• a motorcycle speed calculator that calculates a motorcycle speed, which is a vehicle speed of the motorcycle;
• an engine-brake acceleration value calculator that calculates an acceleration value of the motorcycle, obtained through an engine brake, at a time of a driving state where the motorcycle can operate the engine brake;
• a deceleration-start inter-vehicle distance calculator that calculates a deceleration-start inter-vehicle distance between the motorcycle and said another vehicle at a time when the motorcycle starts to decelerate through the engine brake;
• and
• an engine-brake acceleration value memory that stores an acceleration value calculated by the engine-brake acceleration value calculator,
• wherein the deceleration-start inter-vehicle distance calculator reads an acceleration value corresponding to a motorcycle speed calculated by the motorcycle speed calculator and a gradient angle calculated by the road-surface gradient angle calculator from the engine-brake acceleration value memory and then calculates the deceleration-start inter-vehicle distance based on the acceleration value read from the engine-brake acceleration value memory, and
• wherein when an inter-vehicle distance between the motorcycle and said another vehicle becomes smaller than the deceleration-start inter-vehicle distance calculated by the deceleration-start inter-vehicle distance calculator, deceleration of the motorcycle through the engine brake is started.