Method of determining the passage of a vehicle through a gap

A method of determining the ability of a vehicle to pass through a restricted gap in a roadway, said method comprising the steps of:

• detecting the restricted gap in said roadway using a camera and generating an image of said restricted gap in response thereto, said restricted gap being an area between at least two objects and said image of said restricted gap being an image captured in a direction of travel of said vehicle;
• defining a vehicle image of said vehicle;
• comparing said vehicle image with said image of said restricted gap using an evaluation unit;
• determining a projection distance between said vehicle and said restricted gap and using said projection distance to dimensionally re-size and scale said vehicle image to provide a scaled image of said vehicle relative to said image of said restricted gap;
• and
• simultaneously displaying on a display said scaled vehicle image and said image of said restricted gap to enable a driver to determine whether said vehicle can pass through said restricted gap;
• wherein said image of said restricted gap is fixed on said display and said scaled image of said vehicle adapts and is scaled to said image of said restricted gap, while said image of said restricted gap on said display does not move;
• wherein the method further comprises the steps of:
• using said projection distance to dimensionally re-size and scale said vehicle image to provide a scaled image of the said vehicle relative to said image of said restricted gap;
• and
• fixing said image of said restricted gap on said display and adapting said scaled image of said vehicle to said image of said restricted gap, while said image of said restricted gap on said display does not move;
• said scaled vehicle image being overlaid on said image of said restricted gap so that a dimensional scale of said scaled vehicle image of said vehicle matches a scale of the restricted gap and is located in its image plane.