DRIVING ASSISTANCE APPARATUS

A driving assistance apparatus to be applied to a vehicle includes a traveling state detector, an occupant monitoring detector, an emotion determination processor, an environment recognizer, and a driving assistance processor. The emotion determination processor determines an emotion of an occupant of the vehicle, based on outputs of the traveling state detector and the occupant monitoring detector. The driving assistance processor performs driving assistance control including one or both of information presentation to the occupant and traveling assistance control on the vehicle, in accordance with an output of one or more of the traveling state detector, the emotion determination processor, and the environment recognizer. The emotion determination processor determines multiple kinds of emotions less suitable for driving than a normal emotion. The driving assistance processor varies a control operation included in the driving assistance control, depending on a kind of the emotion determined by the emotion determination processor.