Skip to main content

Sweden working on device to test tiredness of drivers

Marcus Nyström, researcher at the Lund University Humanities Lab, in Sweden, has revealed that the lab is currently developing a product that will be able to test if a person is too tired to drive. The project uses eyetracking, where a driver is required to follow a moving ball and his eye movements and pupil reactions are evaluated to determine if he/she is too tired to drive safely.
April 18, 2012 Read time: 2 mins
RSSMarcus Nyström, researcher at the Lund University Humanities Lab, in Sweden, has revealed that the lab is currently developing a product that will be able to test if a person is too tired to drive. The project uses eyetracking, where a driver is required to follow a moving ball and his eye movements and pupil reactions are evaluated to determine if he/she is too tired to drive safely.

The project has already tested 24 people in cooperation with the Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute (VTI) in Linköping. Initial reports seem to confirm that the theory can work in practice. According to Christer Ahlström of VTI, a product of this nature would be in high demand by police forces, who are interested in finding an efficient way to measure how tired a driver is.

Under Swedish law, drivers are forbidden to drive motor vehicles when they are too tired. To date, however, there is no tool for accurately measuring this.

Related Content

  • ITS World Congress debates perceptions of enforcement
    December 4, 2012
    The technical programme of this year’s ITS World Congress in Vienna includes a special session on the image of enforcement. ITS International examines the scale of the problem and what can be done about it. Debate on the merits and difficulties of enforcing speed limits appears centred on a conflict of principles. Put very simply, local communities, people living close to busy or hazardous roads, want to see traffic speeds calmed. Drivers on those roads, on the whole, want their principle of freedom to be m
  • Cost benefit: just $25 boosts pedestrian safety in Florida
    April 29, 2019
    A relatively straightforward change to the way that pedestrians cross the street in a Florida city has made a significant safety improvement. And what’s more, it was cheap, finds David Crawford Installing a lead pedestrian interval (LPI) system at 25 central business district signalised intersections in the Florida city of Lakeland has cut numbers of incidents involving pedestrians by some 60% - at a cost of US$25 for 30 minutes' work, according to traffic operations manager Angelo Rao.
  • Reports says Apple iOS too late and too limited
    July 24, 2013
    According to Frost and Sullivan, Apple’s new iOS 7 for the automotive industry is too late and too limited for the automotive market. The device has notable changes to the interface and improved voice capabilities of personal assistant SIRI. Auto OEMs however, with their respective partners have moved many a mile without the need for Apple’s involvement. The announcement may be seen as a phased approach after last year’s announcement of SIRI EyesFree by Apple at WWDC. “If compared to other players, such as
  • In-vehicle intersection violation Warning system
    January 31, 2012
    Mike Schagrin, ITS Joint Program Office, RITA, and John Harding, NHTSA, describe US progress towards an in-vehicle Intersection Violation Warning system. In 2008, there were 37,261 fatalities on US roadways. Of these, 7,772, some 20.8 per cent of the total, were defined as intersection crashes or intersection-related crashes. Through a multi-agency research initiative led by the Research and Innovative Technology Administration (RITA), the US Department of Transportation (USDOT) has developed a prototype In