1. A method for road sign recognition, in which images of a region surrounding the vehicle are acquired by a camera, image data of the camera are analyzed, wherein at least one image region that contains a potential road sign is determined, the image region that contains the potential road sign is submitted to a first classification unit that identifies the potential road sign, on the basis of at least one class-specific feature, as a road sign belonging to a particular class having the class-specific feature, characterized in that a brightness or a color intensity of a surface of the road sign is analyzed along radially extending scanning beams starting from a defined starting point within the surface of the road sign, in a brightness or color intensity analysis that comprises a one-dimensional gradient formation of brightness values or color intensity values of pixels of the image data along the scanning beams, potential contour points of an information-bearing part of the road sign are determined from results of the brightness or color intensity analysis, a limited region of the surface of the road sign is extracted as an information-bearing part of the road sign that includes all determined potential contour points, and the extracted limited region is submitted to a second classification unit for semantic interpretation.