In this paper, several optimizations are proposed to enhance the quality of lane detection algorithms in automotive applications. Considering the diagonal directions of lanes, the proposed limited Hough transform newly introduces image-splitting and angle-limiting schemes that relax the number of possible angles at the line voting process. In addition, unnecessary edges along the horizontal and vertical directions are pre-defined and removed during the edge detection procedures, increasing the detecting accuracy remarkably. Simulation results shows that the proposed lane recognition algorithm achieves an accuracy of more than 90% and a computing speed of 92 frame/sec, which are superior to the results from the previous algorithms.