Patent 11021156 was granted and assigned to Toyota on June, 2021 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
A lane change support apparatus includes an electronic control unit configured to, when it is recognized that there is an abnormality in a driver of a host vehicle, determine whether or not lane change is possible. The electronic control unit is configured to determine that the lane change is possible when a vehicle speed of the host vehicle is lower than a predetermined upper limit speed, a following vehicle present closest to the host vehicle has stayed in a rear guard vehicle approval range for a predetermined time or longer, and a vehicle is not present in a lane change allowance gap.