Patent ID: 6922624

Claim:
A vehicle brake control apparatus comprising: a brake commanding element for making a judgment based on input information as to whether a vehicle should decelerate or not and for generating a brake command when it is determined that the vehicle should decelerate; a braking element for applying brake on the vehicle with a predetermined braking force corresponding to said brake command generated by said brake commanding element; and a braking force restricting element for restricting a maximum value of said braking force to be generated by said braking element in response to said brake command to a value smaller by a predetermined ratio than an estimated maximum braking force being estimated based on information relating to a road surface friction coefficient, wherein said brake commanding element commands an automatic brake operation carried out for automatically decelerating the vehicle when it is judged that there is a prospective danger of vehicle collision or there is a necessity of securing safety of the vehicle based on entered collision danger information relating to collision danger of the vehicle relative to a forward obstacle or relevant information for vehicle safety, said braking force restricting element sets a maximum value of an automatic braking force, being said braking force to be generated by said braking element during said automatic brake operation, to a value smaller by a predetermined ratio than said estimated maximum braking force, and said braking force restricting element increases said braking force within a range of said estimated maximum braking force, when a driver applies none of manual braking, manual steering, and manual accelerating operations when a predetermined time has elapsed after said automatic brake operation is started.