Research to prevent the driver from falling asleep behind the wheel

A system has been developed to detect drops in driver alertness on the basis of steering wheel movements. During a period of system validation, 30 experiments were performed on the driving simulator of the VTI (Sweden). Twenty eight of the experiments led to the same conclusion: the system is capable of discriminating between two different alertness levels. Twelve of the experiments ended with dozing off, causing the driver to leave the road; this dozing off could have been prevented by the system is the alarm had been actuated. These results obtained on simulator were able to be checked in real-world driving conditions by two experiments performed on motorway. Both drivers showed drops in alertness that were detected by the system.