ENGINE CONTROL DEVICE

An engine controlling apparatus capable of assuring stability of behavior of a vehicle and improving a fuel efficiency in a control for automatically stopping and restarting an engine of the vehicle during running of the vehicle. When the engine is automatically stopped or restarted during turning of the vehicle, a force applied from a road surface to a tire of the vehicle is changed in magnitude and direction. When the engine is automatically stopped during turning of the vehicle, a spinning tendency is increased due to a load movement. The behavior of the vehicle is more likely to be unstable due to the automatic stop or restart of the engine when an absolute value of a steering velocity is high than when it is low. Further, even without the steering velocity being changed, the behavior is more likely to be unstable when a running velocity is high than when it is low. Therefore, when the absolute value of the steering velocity is higher than a threshold value that is reduced with increase of the running velocity, the automatic stop and restart of the engine are inhibited whereby it is possible to avoid the behavior from becoming unstable and to improve the fuel efficiency.