The invention relates to a method for detecting a pedestrian (27) moving in an environmental region of a motor vehicle relatively to the motor vehicle based on a temporal sequence of images (18) of the environmental region, which are provided by means of a camera of the motor vehicle (1), wherein characteristic features are extracted from the images (18) and a plurality of optical flow vectors is determined to the characteristic features of at least two consecutively captured images of the sequence by means of an image processing device of the motor vehicle, which indicate a movement of the respective characteristic features over the sequence, wherein for detecting the pedestrian (27), several confidence metrics are determined based on the characteristic features and the optical flow vectors, and based on the confidence metrics, it is examined if a preset plausibility check criterion required for the detection of the pedestrian (27) is satisfied, wherein the pedestrian (27) is supposed to be detected if the plausibility check criterion with respect to the confidence metrics is satisfied.