The invention relates to a method of detecting objects within a wide range of a road vehicle. According to said method, the distance between a moving or stationary vehicle and one or more objects is calculated by distance-based image segmentation using stereoscopic image processing techniques and the properties of the detected objects are determined by object recognition in the segmented image areas. Image areas of three-dimensional and/or flat objects are detected and said three-dimensional and/or flat objects are detected by clustering 3D pixels according to defined criteria. Three-dimensional objects are determined by features with similar distance values and flat objects by features with similar height values.