1. A vehicle surroundings monitoring apparatus which monitors the surroundings of a vehicle by using an image captured by a camera mounted on the vehicle, comprising: an object extraction process unit which extracts an image area of an object from the image captured by the camera; and an object type determination process unit which determines an object type according to whether the image area of the object extracted by the object extraction process unit includes a first object area in which the ratio of widths in different directions is within a predetermined range and a plurality of second object areas located below the first object area and smaller in area than the first object area.