In a driving assist system for a vehicle, a camera driver controls an on-board rear camera to take an image of an area around a vehicle only when light-emitting diodes of the tail lights and brake lights are non-luminous, responsive to an image pickup timing signal output from a light control. An image processor executes panoramic view conversion of image data input from the camera driver, stores the converted data in an image memory, and displays a composite image by combining a plurality of sets of panoramic view data.