Patent ID: 11928961
Assignee: GOOGLE LLC
Field: Control (Instruments)
Classification: CPC G  B | IPC B  G

Claim 0:
1. A method for use in controlling the speed of a vehicle, the method comprising:
identifying, at one or more processors, a road segment within a geographic area having more than a threshold amount of traffic, wherein the traffic is not caused by an accident, a lane closure, construction, or a traffic signal;
in response to identifying the road segment wherein the traffic is not caused by the accident, the lane closure, construction, or the traffic signal, determining, by the one or more processors, a threshold following distance for the road segment based on a traffic density of the road segment, wherein the threshold following distance decreases as the traffic density increases;
determining, by the one or more processors, a target speed based on the threshold following distance for a vehicle approaching the road segment to travel at to reduce an amount of traffic at the road segment; and
controlling the vehicle speed by providing, by the one or more processors, the target speed to a computing device associated with the vehicle approaching the road segment.