Analysis of peripheral vehicular behavior in driver´s gaze transition: Differences between driver´s neutral and cognitive distraction states

To support safe driving, numerous methods have been proposed for detecting distractions based on the measurements of a driver´s gaze. These methods empirically focused on certain driving contexts, and analyzed gaze behavior under particular peripheral vehicular conditions; therefore, numerous driving situations were not considered. To address this problem, we propose a data-driven approach that analyzes peripheral vehicular behaviors during gaze transitions of drivers, to compare their neutral driving state with a cognitive distraction state. The analysis results show that drivers, under the neutral conditions, turned their gaze to peripheral vehicles to be focused on; however, they did not do this consistently under the distracted conditions. In addition, we propose a simple classifier to discriminate between the distracted and the neutral states by analyzing peripheral vehicular behavior. The proposed classifier can manage various situations, and provide high discrimination accuracy, by focusing on gaze transitions from the front view toward other directions.