Patent ID: 7884705

Claim:
A safety-drive assistance device for assisting a driver in driving a vehicle under a traffic environment, said vehicle having a first camera for taking an image of an outside of said vehicle, and a second camera for taking an image of an inside of said vehicle, comprising: a traffic environment detecting unit operable to detect a watched target in said traffic environment from said image taken by said first camera; a visual-line direction detecting unit operable to detect a direction of a visual line of said driver on the basis of said image of two eyes or one eye of said driver taken by said second camera; and a visual recognition judging unit for making a judgment whether said driver visually recognizes said watched target or not, wherein said visual recognition judging unit is: operable to calculate a first vector of a moving pattern, during a predetermined period, regarding said watched target mapped on a two dimensional space intersected by a line between the position of an eye of said driver and said watched target; operable to calculate a second vector of a moving pattern, during said predetermined period, of an intersection point of said two dimensional space with said visual line of said driver detected by said visual-line direction detecting unit; and operable to make said judgment based on an inner product of said first vector with said second vector and a magnitude of said first vector.