Vehicle surroundings monitoring apparatus and traveling control system incorporating the apparatus

A vehicle surroundings monitoring apparatus inputs signals indicative of images from a stereoscopic camera, a vehicle speed, a steering wheel angle and a yaw rate and estimates a traveling path of an own vehicle according to vehicle forward information and traveling conditions of the own vehicle. The apparatus establishes a traveling region A according to this traveling path and further establishes a traveling region B based on at least either of the traveling region A and road information. It is judged whether a detected solid object is a preceding vehicle or a tentative preceding vehicle according to the state of existence of the object in the traveling regions A, B and the preceding vehicle is outputted to a traveling control unit.