Rider State Monitoring for Attentiveness Detection for Enhanced Two-wheeler Safety

Statistics report that one death occurs on Indian roads every three and a half minutes. With discussions on regulating new safety technologies like ABS, ESC, Advanced Rider Assistance Systems (ARAS) etc. for two-wheelers in India, the automotive industry has been grappling with challenges, in terms of developing cost-effective and innovative solutions adapted to regional market and its customers. Also, regulations that mandate the use of rider assistive technologies not only present opportunities to improve road safety, but also challenges for safe adoption and implementation. Distracted and inattentive riding is one of the major causes for severe road accidents in two-wheeler segments . The causes of distraction can be many - but the foremost one - as indicated by the accident data analysis - is the distraction due to mobile phones. Additionally, distracted riding might interfere with safe activation of ARAS functionalities that feature highly dynamic interventions, as the rider is unprepared for the motorcycle to take control. Thus, the system needs to detect the rider state of awareness to ensure minimum collateral impact over the rider. In this paper, we propose a solution to detect distracted riding in two-wheelers to minimize potential accidents and also, to improve effectiveness of ARAS functionalities for prevention of an inevitable accident. With a rider state monitoring unit, this system widens its applicability to even more dynamic scenarios, supported by the knowledge about the rider’s posture and position.