Vehicle control device

A vehicle control device comprising:

• a cruise controller to cause a vehicle to perform constant-speed traveling at a set speed;
• a detector to detect a position of an electronic toll collection (ETC) toll gate and a route distance from a present position of the vehicle to the ETC toll gate, and determine whether or not the vehicle has passed through the ETC toll gate, on the basis of a result of the detection;
• a first controller to reduce the set speed of the vehicle in accordance with the route distance to pass through the ETC toll gate while the vehicle is performing the constant-speed traveling, until the detector determines that the vehicle has passed through the ETC toll gate;
• a vehicle frontward detector to detect road information about a road frontward of the vehicle, the road information indicating a type of a road after passing through the ETC toll gate;
• and
• a second controller to change control content in the cruise controller on the basis of a detection result from the vehicle frontward detector, when the detector determines that the vehicle has passed through the ETC toll gate, while the vehicle is performing the constant-speed traveling by the cruise controller,
• when the road information indicates that the type of the road after passing through the ETC toll gate is an expressway, the second controller continues to perform the constant-speed traveling at the set speed before being reduced to pass through the ETC toll gate, and when the road information indicates that the type of the road after passing through the ETC toll gate is not an expressway, the second controller turns off the constant-speed traveling and enters a driver's manual traveling state.