Vehicle drive assist apparatus

A vehicle drive assist apparatus to be applied to a vehicle, the vehicle drive assist apparatus comprising:

• a surrounding-condition-information acquiring unit comprising at least one of a sensor or a camera configured to recognize a surrounding condition around the vehicle to acquire surrounding condition information;
• a vehicle-state-information acquiring unit comprising an autonomous traveling sensor assembly configured to recognize an operational state of the vehicle to acquire vehicle state information;
• a light-distribution control processor configured to execute light distribution control to control distribution of illumination light to a region in front of the vehicle by controlling an illumination device of the vehicle;
• a traveling control processor configured to execute traveling control of the vehicle in accordance with traffic lane designation;
• an oncoming vehicle detector configured to:
• determine whether the surrounding-condition-information acquiring unit detects a mobile object moving in front of the vehicle toward the vehicle;
• in response to determining that the surrounding-condition-information acquiring unit detects the mobile object, determine a position of the mobile object with respect to the vehicle as viewed in a width direction of the vehicle;
• and
• in response to the determined position of the mobile object, determine whether the mobile object is an oncoming vehicle, the oncoming vehicle is positioned in left front of the vehicle when the vehicle is in a right-hand basis control, or in right front of the vehicle when the vehicle is in a left-hand basis control,
• a DDI detector comprising a circuitry configured to detect a diverging diamond interchange (DDI) in the region in front of the vehicle on a basis of the surrounding condition information and make a DDI determination as to whether the vehicle is entering the DDI or exiting from the DDI on a basis of the determination of the oncoming vehicle detector and the vehicle state information;
• and
• a control switch configured to switch the traveling control executed by the traveling control processor on a basis of a result of the DDI determination made by the DDI detector, wherein
• the control switch is configured to
• switch the traveling control executed by the traveling control processor and the light distribution control executed by the light-distribution control processor between the right-hand basis control and the left-hand basis control, in response to the vehicle entering the DDI being detected as the result of the DDI determination made by the DDI detector, and
• switch the traveling control executed by the traveling control processor and the light distribution control executed by the light-distribution control processor between a right-hand basis control and a left-hand basis control, in response to the vehicle exiting from the DDI being detected as the result of the DDI determination made by the DDI detector.