A vehicle control apparatus includes: a straight-ahead cruising determining unit that determines whether or not a vehicle is in a straight-ahead cruising state; a detecting unit that detects a target object that meets a predetermined condition related to at least either of a current positional relationship or a future predicted positional relationship with the vehicle, among objects ahead of the vehicle, when the vehicle is determined to be in the straight-ahead cruising state; an operation control unit that makes the vehicle perform a predetermined operation related to the detected target object; and a condition setting unit that sets the condition to be applied to the left side in relation to a center line of the vehicle to differ from the condition to be applied to the right side, based on a cruising trajectory of the vehicle.