Patent ID: 8513836

Claim:
A drive control device for an electric load, comprising: a switching element serially connected to an electric load to which a power is supplied from a drive power source; and monitoring/controlling means for controlling opening/closing of the switching element, and monitoring presence/absence of an abnormal state of a power supply circuit for the electric load, wherein: the monitoring/controlling means generates a control output signal serving as one of a circuit closing command and a circuit opening command and supplies the switching element and a determination storing circuit with the control output signal; the switching element generates a state detection signal according to open/closed-circuit states of the switching element, and supplies the determination storing circuit with the state detection signal; the determination storing circuit is configured to: detect, when the control output signal is the circuit closing command, whether the switching element has normally been brought into a closed-circuit state and store a result of the detection, thereby generating a closed-circuit determination storing signal; detect, when the control output signal is the circuit opening command, whether the switching element has normally been brought into an open-circuit state and store a result of the detection, thereby generating an open-circuit determination storing signal; and one of reset the stored information by itself when the monitoring/controlling means has read the determination storing signal and periodically reset forcedly the stored information by a command of the monitoring/controlling means; and the monitoring/controlling means further periodically reads and stores the closed-circuit determination storing signal and the open-circuit determination storing signal serving as the determination storing signal before the determination storing circuit is reset, thereby determining the presence/absence of the abnormal state according to a combination of logics relating to a signal voltage level of the determination storing signal stored before.