Driver’s Big Brother: How Smartphones Can Increase Driver’s Awareness

Abstract

Using mobile devices while driving has been widely shown to pose serious safety risk. Various approaches aim at mitigating the risk of mobile devices while driving. Some initiatives have focused on increasing drivers’ awareness of such potential risk. Along the same vein, we present a model, and its implementation, for assessing the degree of distraction that drivers experience while using phones during driving. Based on data collected during each driving session, the application gives statistics, such as keypad interaction, number and length of phone calls and the driving speed, to the driver. This should increase the awareness of drivers by helping them understand how much distraction they got involved with during driving and how much hazardous they can be to themselves and to others. Our experiments with drivers demonstrated the potential of the application at highlighting risky behavior, promoting awareness and motivating better driving.