A driver assistance system detects lane markings in a perspective image of a road in front of a vehicle. The driver assistance system extracts a plurality of features, in particular lane markings, from the perspective image for generating a set of feature coordinates, in particular lane marking coordinates. The system generates a plurality of pairs of feature coordinates, each pair defining a straight line, and estimates a lane curvature on the basis of a subset of the pairs of feature coordinates. For each pair a straight line defined by the pair intersects a predefined target portion of the perspective image, the predefined target portion including a plurality of possible positions of a vanishing point.