Techniques and apparatuses are described that implement lateral-bin monitoring for radar target detection. In particular, a radar system, which is mounted to a moving platform, divides a region of interest that is associated with at least one side of the moving platform into multiple lateral bins. The radar system maps locations of detections to the lateral bins, and monitors respective quantities of consecutive frames in which detections occur within the lateral bins. The radar system determines that at least one object is present within one of the lateral bins responsive to a quantity of consecutive frames having detections within the lateral bin being equal to or greater than a threshold. By waiting for a lateral bin to have detections across multiple consecutive frames, the radar system can minimize the false-alarm rate without reducing sensitivity.