Method for monitoring an admissibility condition (21) for an automated
driving mode of a motor vehicle (10) by a
control circuit (18), wherein the admissibility condition (21) includes that the
driving mode may only be active when driving on roads (16) of at least one predetermined approved road class (29, 31), and for checking a current road class (29, 31) of a road segment (17) ahead in the direction of travel (15) of a road (16) currently being traveled in a first
signal path (19): from a digital
road map (27) to the road segment (17), map data indicating the road class (29, 31) of the road segment (17) are read out from a
data memory and then checked to see whether they indicate the at least one permitted road class (29, 31), wherein, independently of the first
signal path (19), in a second
signal path (20) operated independently of the first signal path (19),
environmental data (33) describing respective environmental features of the road segment (17) are received from an
environmental sensor (32) or a plurality of environmental sensors (32), characterized in that independent of the first signal path (19) in the second signal path (20) operated independently of the first signal path (19), characteristics (38) of the road segment (17) are estimated by means of an
estimation routine (35) on the basis of the surrounding data (33), and it is detected whether the estimated characteristics (38) in the road segment (17)
lying ahead signal a probability (30, 41) of the presence of the at least one permitted road class (29, 31) that is greater than a predetermined threshold value, and checking the admissibility condition (21) comprises signaling the presence of the at least one permitted road class (29, 31) for the road segment (17) ahead only if both the first signal path (19) and the second signal path (20) confirm the existence of the road class (29, 31), and otherwise carrying out a predetermined blocking measure (22) for the
driving mode.