The invention relates to a vehicle safety system. The vehicle safety system includes a sensing means arranged to detect the presence of a preceding vehicle and, if appropriate, to produce at least one first output representative of one or more characteristics of the preceding vehicle, the sensing means being further arranged to detect the presence of an oncoming vehicle and, if appropriate, to produce at least one second output signal which is representative of one or more characteristics of the oncoming vehicle, and a control device arranged to receive the output signals from the sensing means and from the signals to generate a result signal which indicates that it is possible for the vehicle to safely overtake the preceding vehicle before the oncoming vehicle blocks the track along which the vehicle is moving to the end of the vehicle overtaking maneuvers. The control device determines whether it is safe to overtake by generating a target line from the output signals and, optionally, vehicle information representing a most remote boundary of an area within which the vehicle will return to a lane after completion of the overtaking process, and determining whether the oncoming vehicle will have passed the target line before the overtaking operation has been completed, and further determining whether the target line maintains a safety distance before the vehicle to be overtaken at the predicted end of the overtaking maneuver.