Head movement-based driver drowsiness detection: A review of state-of-art techniques

Driver fatigue is one of the most common reasons for deadly road accidents around the world. Continuous monotonous driving for long hours without rest causes drowsiness and consequently fatal road accidents. Automatic driver drowsiness detection can prevent a vast number of sleep persuaded road accidents, and hence can save precious lives. Number of techniques for driver drowsiness detection has been examined in the recent past. This paper presents a survey of these techniques. These techniques detect the driver drowsiness by observing the driving pattern. Abnormalities in driving pattern is hypothesized as a drowsiness state of driver. Various measures such as subjective, behavioral, physiological, and vehicular have been used for this purpose. The comparative analysis of these techniques indicates that behavioral measures are easy to acquire and does not disturb the driver as they are non-invasive. Among various behavioral measures, head movement measure is found to be most precise and effective.