Vehicle control apparatus

A vehicle control apparatus comprising:

• an in-vehicle camera which captures an image of an area located ahead of an own vehicle in a traveling direction thereof;
• a marking detection section which detects, from the image captured by the in-vehicle camera, left and right lane markings defining an own lane which is a traffic lane in which the own vehicle is traveling;
• a following travel section which causes the own vehicle to follow a preceding vehicle on a condition that a vehicle traveling ahead in the own lane has been determined as the preceding vehicle based on the lane markings detected by the marking detection section;
• an in-vehicle sensor which detects behavior of the own vehicle;
• an estimation and calculation section which estimates and calculates the lane markings from the behavior of the own vehicle detected by the in-vehicle sensor;
• a measurement section which measures an inter-vehicular distance between the own vehicle and the preceding vehicle;
• and
• a deviation determination section which, during execution of following travel control by the following travel section to cause the own vehicle to travel following the preceding vehicle, (i) when determining that the inter-vehicular distance measured by the measurement section is longer than a predetermined distance indicating a distance by which the lane marking present ahead of the preceding vehicle is blocked by the preceding vehicle, causes the following travel section to continue the execution of the following travel control, (ii) when determining that the inter-vehicular distance is shorter than the predetermined distance and at least one of the lane markings detected by the marking detection section has become undetectable, determines based on the lane markings estimated and calculated by the estimation and calculation section whether or not the preceding vehicle has deviated to a traffic lane different from the own lane, and (iii) when determining that the inter-vehicular distance is shorter than the predetermined distance and the lane markings on both sides are detectable by the marking detection section, determines based on the left and right lane markings detected by the marking detection section whether or not the preceding vehicle has deviated to a traffic lane different from the own lane, wherein
• when the deviation determination section determines, during the execution of the following travel control, that the preceding vehicle has deviated to a traffic lane different from the own lane, the following travel section ends the following travel control.