Abstract
In recent years, driving in an aimless state is the worst cause of fatal car accidents in Japan. The goal of our study is to detect the aimless state of car drivers noninvasively in order to prevent the fatal car accidents. Eye movements are highly possible biological indices that reflect the aimless state of car drivers as they are affected by various mental states such as sleepiness, and attentiveness. In this paper, we evaluated the movements of both eyes while subjects were performing a driving simulation (DS) and a simple reaction test. We demonstrate that the eyes fluctuate slowly without making saccades (SEM) and simultaneously the vergence angle rapidly fluctuates (FVA), when the car deviated from its lane during the DS and the subject took significantly long reaction time during the reaction test. Thus the cooccurrence of SEM and FVA can be a reliable objective measure of the aimless state even when the driver is looking ahead with his/her eyes open.
