Mazda Motor Corporation

Keiichi Yamasaki

Katsuhisa Maedo

Yoshihiro Yamamoto

Kenichi Nakamoto

Yasuyuki Tonohara

Masaaki Aoki

Yutaka Sakuragi

Shigeru Takenaka

Kazutaka Aihara

A driver assistance system is provided that allows a driver to easily perform an accelerator operation by a finger of his/her hand while grasping a steering holding section. The driver assistance system includes an operation member near a steering wheel held by a driver, which rotates about a rotation shaft in a vehicle front-rear direction and thereby steers the vehicle. The operation member has an operation section that the driver can manually operate to accelerate/decelerate the vehicle, and includes a support member on the steering wheel, the support member supporting the operation member in a slidingly displaceable manner along a steering axial direction. The operation section is disposed near a radially inner side of a rim section of the steering wheel, and the operation section and the rim section overlap in the steering axial direction within a movable range of the operation member along the steering axial direction.

Driver assistance system

A driver assistance system enables brake and accelerator operation by an operation bar in a manner close to a sense of a driver of a vehicle, regardless of the degree of operation of the operation bar. Embodiments include an operation bar extending downward toward a vehicle floor panel from a manual operation area where a seated driver manually operates the operation bar, and whose lower portion is supported in a slidingly displaceable manner along an axial direction in a front-down, rear-up tilted state. The operation bar includes a brake actuation section, below the manual operation area, that actuates a brake mechanism by sliding displacement of the operation bar in a front-down direction; and an accelerator actuation section that actuates an acceleration mechanism by sliding displacement of the operation bar in a rear-up direction that is a reverse direction on the same axis from the sliding displacement in the front-down direction.

A driving assistance apparatus that includes a brake operation portion that applies a brake to a vehicle, the brake operation portion allowing a manual brake operation by a hand of a driver of the vehicle, the brake operation portion including a brake operation body and a grip portion to be gripped by the hand of the driver, the grip portion being provided at an upper end of the brake operation body, and a shift-down switch that shifts-down the vehicle is provided on the grip portion, the shift-down switch allowing a manual shift-down operation by the hand of the driver.

Driving assistance apparatus

Growing community of inventors

Hiroshima, Japan

Keiichi Yamasaki