To provide a vehicle detector for detecting a vehicle stably by selecting an appropriate vehicle detection method depending on the situation.

A decision is made whether the Y axis value of an edge point extracted from a picked-up image is below a predetermined value or not (step S200). If it is below a predetermined value, pattern matching processing is selected and a basic vehicle pattern is read out (step S201) and then a feature point is determined by pattern matching (step S202). If it is larger than the predetermined value, grouping processing is selected and edge points moving in the substantially same direction at the substantially same speed on the screen are grouped (step S204) thus judging the feature point of the vehicle (step S205). The feature point thus detected is registered as a vehicle pattern (step S203, S206).

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