A vehicle external recognition system is provided with: a relative position detecting section detecting an object ahead of a vehicle as a detected object to detect a relative position relationship between the detected object and the vehicle, a relative velocity calculating section calculating a relative velocity between the detected object and the vehicle based on the relative position relationship detected by the relative position detecting section by using an initial value that is preset, a vehicle velocity detecting section detecting a velocity of the vehicle, and a motion attribute discriminating section discriminating a motion attribute, indicative of a motion state of the detected object, based on the relative velocity calculated by the relative velocity calculating section and the velocity detected by the vehicle velocity detecting section.