VEHICLE CONTROL DEVICE

A vehicle control device capable of suppressing an unnecessary lane-change operation of a host vehicle and suppressing deterioration of ride comfort is achieved. A vehicle control device includes peripheral state detection sensors to that detect a peripheral state for a host vehicle, a blind-spot object estimation processing unit that calculates a blind-spot region around the host vehicle based on the detected peripheral state of the host vehicle and a feature amount of map information, and estimates an object existing in the blind-spot region and a behavior trend of the object, and a potential risk map generation unit that generates a region having a potential risk that the host vehicle approaches the object, based on the behavior trend of the object estimated by the blind-spot object estimation processing unit . The vehicle control device further includes an automatic driving planning unit that generates a lane-change trajectory from the peripheral state of the host vehicle and the map information, compares the lane-change trajectory with a potential risk map, and determines whether or not lane change of the host vehicle is possible, and a vehicle motion control unit that controls an operation of the host vehicle in accordance with the determination of whether or not the lane change is possible.