NHTSA sought clearance to test whether driver monitoring systems detect drowsiness

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration published a notice on August 26 seeking Office of Management and Budget clearance for a new information collection supporting research into driver monitoring systems. Comments close on October 26.

The notice puts the number of respondents at 66 — 36 on a test track near Phoenix, Arizona and 30 in a driving simulator in Iowa City, Iowa, screened from pools of 100 and 150 — while describing the research goal as 48 completed drives, the larger recruitment covering attrition. Track participants would be assigned drive times of 11pm, 1:30am and 4am, would be required to have been awake at least 16 hours beforehand with no naps or caffeine for 13 hours, would take a breathalyzer test, and would then drive for two hours at night while recorded by a camera, an infrared camera and the vehicle’s driver monitoring system. Simulator participants would answer sleepiness questionnaires every ten minutes.

The notice states that there is no consensus approach to how driver monitoring systems should be tested for drowsiness detection. It says the Euro NCAP Safety Assist protocol specifies eyelid-closure, microsleep and sleep criteria but not the driving task, driver characteristics or environment under which they are measured, and that those criteria capture late-stage drowsiness where countermeasures may no longer be effective.

NHTSA said the work would not develop an objective test procedure for use in a Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard.