A method includes receiving a series of road images from a side-view camera sensor of the autonomous driving vehicle. For each object from objects captured in the series of road images, a series of bounding boxes in the series of road images is generated, and a direction of travel or stationarity of the object is determined. The methods and apparatus also include determining a speed of each object for which the direction of travel has been determined and determining, based on the directions of travel, speeds, or stationarity of the objects, whether the autonomous driving vehicle can safely move in a predetermined direction. Furthermore, one or more control signals is sent to the autonomous driving vehicle to cause the autonomous driving vehicle to move or to remain stationary based on determining whether the autonomous driving vehicle can safely move in the predetermined direction.