The present invention relates to a method for detecting a map matching position of a vehicle in a navigation system, wherein coordinates of a current vehicle location are obtained from navigation messages received by a GPS receiver using a general line equation for obtaining an intersection point between an arbitrary line and a perpendicular line drawn from an arbitrary point to the line, and the current vehicle location is matched to coordinates found through orthogonal projection on a link on a digital map closest to the obtained coordinates of the current vehicle location. The current vehicle location is detected from the navigation messages received by the GPS receiver, the detected current vehicle location is matched on the digital map to obtain coordinates P.sub.0 of the current vehicle location, the digital map is searched to find a road link closest to the obtained coordinates P.sub.0 of the current vehicle location, coordinates P.sub.1 and P.sub.2 of both end points of the searched road link are obtained, the orientation of line {overscore (P.sub.1P.sub.2)} defined by the coordinates P.sub.1 and P.sub.2 of the obtained road link is checked on the digital map, coordinates P of an intersection point of a perpendicular line drawn from the obtained coordinates P.sub.0 to line {overscore (P.sub.1P.sub.2)} are obtained, and the current vehicle location is matched to the obtained coordinates P of the intersection point.