Data mining in a digital map database to identify unusually narrow lanes or roads and enabling precautionary actions in a vehicle

摘要

Disclosed is a feature for a vehicle that enables taking precautionary actions in response to conditions on the road network around or ahead of the vehicle, in particular, an unusually narrow road width or lane width. A database that represents the road network is used to determine locations where an unusually narrow road width or lane width exists along roads. Then, precautionary action data is added to the database to indicate a location at which a precautionary action is to be taken about the location where the unusually narrow road width or lane width exists. A precautionary action system installed in a vehicle uses this database, or a database derived therefrom, in combination with a positioning system to determine when the vehicle is at a location that corresponds to the location of a precautionary action. When the vehicle is at such a location, a precautionary action is taken by a vehicle system as the vehicle is approaching a location where the unusually narrow road width or lane width exists.

主权项

1. A method for making an augmented version of a database that can be used as a component in a vehicle system that provides a precautionary action in a vehicle when the vehicle approaches a potentially hazardous location, wherein the potentially hazardous location is one in which a road section has an unusually narrow width, the method comprising:
using data contained in a first version of a database comprising data representative of road sections of varying road width within a geographic region to identify, prior to the vehicle system having been provided with the component comprising the augmented version of the database, road sections located throughout the geographic region that have a narrow road width; for those road sections located throughout the geographic region that have been identified as having a narrow road width, evaluating data indicating the road width to determine whether the narrow road width is less than a threshold; forming the augmented version of the database by adding precautionary action data to the first version of the database in association with each road section identified as having a narrow road width where the narrow road width is determine to be less than the threshold to indicate locations at which a precautionary action is to be taken by the vehicle system when approaching those locations such that the vehicle system may determine whether or not to take a precautionary action upon approach to a location based solely on whether precautionary action data is associated with the location in the augmented version of the database; and causing the vehicle system to take a precautionary action when approaching a location associated with precautionary action data in the augmented version of the database.