VEHICLE DRIVING HAZARD RECOGNITION AND AVOIDANCE APPARATUS AND VEHICLE CONTROL DEVICE

A vehicle exterior environment recognition apparatus includes a computer configured to serve as a target region setting unit, an edge counter, and a wheel determiner. The target region setting unit sets, as one or more target regions, one or more predetermined ranges of a screen. The edge counter provides setting of a plurality of divided sections, by dividing each of the one or more target regions with borderlines radiated from a center of each of the one or more target regions, and counts the number of predetermined slant edges and the total number of blocks in each of the plurality of divided sections. The wheel determiner determines wheel-likeliness of each of the one or more target regions, based on a rate of the number of the slant edges to the total number of blocks in each of the plurality of divided sections.