TECHNICAL FIELD

The present invention relates to a travel control method and a travel control apparatus for a vehicle that include autonomous travel control.

BACKGROUND

A travel control apparatus that assists the steering of a vehicle is known, which corrects the vehicle speed so that the set speed when the driver travels along a curve without holding the steering wheel is lower than the set speed when the driver travels along the curve while holding the steering wheel, thereby eliminating anxiety in the travel sense (JP2017-144776A).

SUMMARY

According to the above prior art, however, when entering a curved route, the set speed is corrected after determining whether or not the driver holds the steering wheel, and the determination process therefore becomes complicated, which may be problematic.

A problem to be solved by the present invention is to provide a travel control method and a travel control apparatus for a vehicle with which the vehicle traveling speed along a curved route can be set with a simple determination process.

The present invention solves the above problem as follows in a travel control method for a vehicle. The travel control method includes using the vehicle to autonomously control a travel of the vehicle. The vehicle has an autonomous speed control function for autonomously controlling the traveling speed of the vehicle and an autonomous steering control function for autonomously controlling the steering of the vehicle. The autonomous speed control function includes a curved route speed control function for controlling the traveling speed of the vehicle at a set speed corresponding to the radius of curvature of a travel route. In the travel control method, when the autonomous speed control function and the autonomous steering control function are set to ON, the curved route speed control function is operated regardless of whether the curved route speed control function is set to ON or OFF.

According to the present invention, provided that the autonomous steering control function is set to ON, the curved route speed control function is operated even when the curved route speed control function is set to OFF, and the vehicle traveling speed along a curved route can therefore be set with a simple determination.

