1. A method of providing assistance to a driver of a vehicle, the method comprising: producing images of a surrounding of the vehicle by means of at least one camera; detecting elliptical structures in the images by detecting circular arc-shaped structures in the image by means of a circle Hough transform (CHT) of the image, wherein a radius and a center point are determined for each circular arc-shaped structure, identifying pairs of circular arc-shaped structures consisting of two of the detected circular arc-shaped structures with substantially equal radii, defining, for each of the pairs of circular arc-shaped structures, a search area within the image depending on the center points of the respective pair of circular arc-shaped structures, searching, for each of the pairs of circular arc-shaped structures, in the search area defined for the pair of circular arc-shaped structures, for a pair of edges connecting the two circular arc-shaped structures of this pair of circular arc-shaped structures, and identifying, if a pair of edges connecting the two circular arc-shaped structures of a pair of circular arc-shaped structures is found, an area enclosed by this pair of edges and this pair of circular arc-shaped structures as an elliptical structure; and identifying circular traffic signs using information about detected elliptical structures.