Distracted Driving Detection

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) defines Distracted driving as follows:

Any activity that diverts attention from driving, including talking or texting on your phone, eating and drinking, talking to people in your vehicle, fiddling with the stereo, entertainment or navigation system — anything that takes your attention away from the task of safe driving.

To align the detection of distracted driving events with the NHTSA definition, the Samsara Dual-Facing AI Dash Cam (model CM32) provides an inward-facing camera, computer vision, and AI to analyze the head position of a driver in real-time.

To get started with Distracted Driving Detection, reference the following workflows to enable and configure event detection:

• Enable AI Event Detection: After you enable AI Event Detection and Configure Distracted Driving Detection, the Samsara Dash Cam analyzes driver behavior for changes in the driver head position to help improve safety by proactively identifying distracted driving behavior.

• Customize Event Detection: When you Configure Distracted Driving Detection, you can customize the type of detection (Mobile Usage or Inattentive Driving), the time threshold, the driver speed threshold, and in-cab audio alerts. Increasing the severity threshold may reduce the triggering of some or all these events.

• Set Alerts: In addition to in-cab audio alerts, you can also configure an alert to receive an email notification or an SMS when an Distracted Driving event occurs.

Impact to Safety Score and Safety Inbox

Each safety event must meet the minimum safety event criteria before the event is uploaded to the Safety Inbox (for safety event criteria, see Safety Event Review in the Safety Inbox). When the safety event exceeds both the Safety Inbox minimum criteria and the configured Distracted Driving threshold, the event impacts the driver safety score and triggers an upload of a five second video to the Safety Inbox starting from 2.5 seconds before the alert starts and ends 2.5 seconds after the alert ends. The video upload captures the moment of distraction, not necessarily the in-cab alert.

You can also view a 60 second inward-facing or road-facing video directly from the safety event video preview (click the more actions menu ( ... ) > Request minute of video to initiate the video retrieval). After you initiate the video retrieval, you can view the video from Video Retrieval.

Best Practices

Distracted Driving Detection can sometimes trigger false positives or inaccurate alerts. To enable accurate detection, encourage your drivers to observe the following best practices:

• Avoid covering the driver's head by removing glasses, hats, masks, and objects hanging in the view of the camera.

• Ensure adequate lighting in the driver cab. Extremely dark or bright conditions can hinder detection.

• Keep hands away from the driver's face. Any obstruction of the face can confuse the detector.

Inattentive Driving Triggers

The camera must be mounted and installed correctly and the driver face and torso must be clearly visible by the CM for Samsara AI to accurately detect distracted driving. See Best Practices for more guidance to ensure accurate detection. An Inattentive Driving event triggers when:

• Driving speed is above 25mph (by default).

• The driver's head is outside of the normal range, off and on, for a sustained period of time.

The following examples provide different scenarios where Samsara expects to detect inattentive driving and also scenarios where Samsara does not expect to detect inattentive driving:

Note

Detection is not guaranteed in any scenario.

Scenario	Example	Triggers Detection
Driver lowers head to look at phone
Driver lowers head to adjust radio
Driver’s head bounces up and down
Driver looks down at food/hands/lap/phone repeatedly
Driver adjusts hat/scratches head/looks left or right while lowering head
Driver uses cell phone without lowering head pose
Driver appears drowsy, yawns, or has eyelids closed while head remains straight ahead
Driver is eating or drinking, but head remains straight ahead
Driver is looking outside the window

Configure Distracted Driving Detection

When the dash cam detects a Distracted Driving event while the vehicle speed is greater than the configured speed threshold, Samsara can play optional in-cab audio alerts to notify drivers to keep their eyes on the road. You can configure detection for the following Distracted Driving detection types:

• Inattentive Driving: Detects abnormal changes in the driver’s head position. Includes events when a driver lowers her head to adjust the radio, eat, or text. Given the high volume of events (especially for speeds of 10 mph or less), Samsara uploads a maximum of one event per trip per driver, two events per hour, up to a maximum of 48 events per day to the Safety Inbox.

• Mobile Usage: Detects the phone itself. Includes events when a driver holds a phone up to her ear without lowering her head. Given the high volume of events (especially for speeds of 10 mph or less), Samsara uploads a maximum of three events per driver per hour, up to a maximum of 24 events per day to the Safety Inbox.

To enable and configure Distracted Driving Detection:

1. Select the Settings icon ( ) at the bottom of your Fleet menu to view dashboard settings.

2. From Fleet > Safety > Event Detection, locate the AI Event Detection settings and enable Distracted Driving Detection.

   

3. Configure the Distracted Driving Detection settings for Inattentive Driving:

   • In-cab audio alerts: By default, in-cab audio alerts are OFF. Choose ON to play in-cab audio alerts when Samsara detects distracted driving after the vehicle speed exceeds the Speed Threshold. In-cab alerts will continue to play in cab, regardless of meeting the event maximum.

   • Speed Threshold: The minimum speed that the vehicle must be driving before an event is detected, an in-cab audio alert plays, and a safety event is uploaded to the Safety Inbox (0 mph, 10 mph, 25 mph (default), or 35 mph). Increase the speed threshold to reduce the volume of events and decrease the speed threshold to increase the volume of events. For example, if you set the Speed Threshold to 0 mph, the dash cam will detect events at all vehicle speeds, including events detected while the vehicle is parked.

   • Severity: Corresponds to the allowable distracted time before a safety event is uploaded to the Safety Inbox. The higher the severity, the longer the amount of time a driver can be distracted before a safety event is generated. The distraction period ends when the driver returns to a normal state. Choose from the following severity levels:

     • Low: 7 seconds (2 beeps)

     • Medium (default): 9 seconds (2 beeps plus voice coaching)

     • High: 13 seconds (2 beeps plus voice coaching)

4. Configure the Distracted Driving Detection settings for Mobile Usage:

   • In-cab audio alerts: By default, in-cab audio alerts are OFF. Choose ON to play in-cab audio alerts when Samsara detects distracted driving after the vehicle speed exceeds the Speed Threshold. In-cab alerts will continue to play in cab, regardless of meeting the event maximum.

   • Speed Threshold: The minimum speed that the vehicle must be driving before an event is detected, an in-cab audio alert plays, and a safety event is uploaded to the Safety Inbox (5 mph, 10 mph, 25 mph (default), or 35 mph). Increase the speed threshold to reduce the volume of events and decrease the speed threshold to increase the volume of events.

5. Save to confirm the setting.