This paper describes a method for detecting a close leading vehicle using the contour of the vehi-cles rear wheels. The contour of a leading vehicles rear wheels in 속 front road image from a B/W CCD camera mounted on the central front bumper of the vehicle, has vertical components and can be discerned clearly in contrast to the road surface. After extracting positive edges and negative edges using the Sobel op-erator in the raw image, every point that can be recognized as a feature of the contour of the leading vehicle wheel is determined. This process can detect the presence of a close leading vehicle, and it is also possible to calculate the distance to the leading vehicle and the lateral deviation angle. This method might be useful for developing and LSA (Low Speed Automation) system that can relieve drivers stress in the stop-and-go traffic conditions encoun-tered on urban roads.