Context-Aware Driver Behavior Detection System in Intelligent Transportation Systems

Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) have emerged as an application of mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs), which use dedicated short-range communication (DSRC) to allow vehicles in close proximity to communicate with each other or to communicate with roadside equipment. Applying wireless access technology in vehicular environments has led to the improvement of road safety and a reduction in the number of fatalities caused by road accidents through development of road safety applications and facilitation of information sharing between moving vehicles regarding the road. This paper focuses on developing a novel and nonintrusive driver behavior detection system using a context-aware system in VANETs to detect abnormal behaviors exhibited by drivers and to warn other vehicles on the road to prevent accidents from happening. A five-layer context-aware architecture is proposed, which is able to collect contextual information about the driving environment, to perform reasoning about certain and uncertain contextual information, and to react upon that information. A probabilistic model based on dynamic Bayesian networks (DBNs) in real time, inferring four types of driving behavior (normal, drunk, reckless, and fatigue) by combining contextual information about the driver, the vehicle, and the environment, is presented. The dynamic behavior model can capture the static and the temporal aspects related to the behavior of the driver, thus leading to robust and accurate behavior detection. The evaluation of behavior detection using synthetic data proves the validity of our model and the importance of including contextual information about the driver, the vehicle, and the environment.