Patent ID: 8085140

Claim:
A traveling information providing apparatus comprising: a peripheral information collector that acquires peripheral information indicating a peripheral situation of a vehicle equipped with said traveling information providing apparatus; an object extractor that extracts a safety confirmation object, which is an object of safety confirmation performed by a driver of the vehicle, from the peripheral information acquired by said peripheral information collector; a line-of-sight detector that detects a line-of-sight direction in which the driver is looking; a visibility calculator that, using the extracted safety confirmation object and the detected driver's line-of-sight direction, calculates a numerical value of visibility, taking into consideration peripheral vision of the driver, with respect to the safety confirmation object according to a distance or angle from the driver's line-of-sight direction to the safety confirmation object; and a controller that performs evocation of safety confirmation or control of a vehicle's driving state based on the calculated numerical value of visibility, wherein when the safety confirmation object is in a peripheral visual field of the driver, said visibility calculator calculates the numerical value of the visibility as a value between zero and a value calculated when the safety confirmation object is located in a central visual field, the numerical value of the visibility calculated for the safety confirmation object in the peripheral visual field being different from either zero or the value calculated when the safety confirmation object is located in the central visual field.