DRIVING ASSISTANCE METHOD AND DRIVING ASSISTANCE DEVICE

The purpose of the present invention is to encourage travel based on appropriate driving assistance by lowering a driving assistance level when alerting a driver is necessary in a lane-keeping travel scenario with a raised driving assistance level.A driving assist method includes a vehicle speed/headway control function and a lane-keeping function as driving assist functions to assist driving operations by a driver, and comprising: assessing whether or not a traveling condition has been met during lane-keeping travel in which a hands-off mode has been selected as the lane-keeping assist mode; and switching the mode from the hands-off mode to a hands-on mode that has as a condition that the driver has their hands on the steering wheel upon assessing that the traveling condition that the actual vehicle speed exceeds the speed limit has been met; characterized by: determining whether or not the driver has performed an accelerator-depressing operation during lane-keeping travel in which the hands-off mode has been selected; requesting the driver to hold the steering wheel upon determining that the driver has performed the accelerator-depressing operation; and the switching of the mode from the hands-off mode to the hands-on mode being performed upon confirming that the driver is holding the steering wheel.