Improving Driver Drowsiness Detection via Personalized EAR/MAR Thresholds and CNN-Based Classification

Abstract

Driver drowsiness is a major cause of traffic accidents worldwide, posing a serious threat to public safety. Vision-based driver monitoring systems often rely on fixed Eye Aspect Ratio (EAR) and Mouth Aspect Ratio (MAR) thresholds; however, such fixed values frequently fail to generalize across individuals due to variations in facial structure, illumination, and driving conditions. This paper proposes a personalized driver drowsiness detection system that monitors eyelid movements, head position, and yawning behavior in real time and provides warnings when signs of fatigue are detected. The system employs driver-specific EAR and MAR thresholds, calibrated before driving, to improve classical metric-based detection. In addition, deep learning-based Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) models are integrated to enhance accuracy in challenging scenarios. The system is evaluated using publicly available datasets as well as a custom dataset collected under diverse lighting conditions, head poses, and user characteristics. Experimental results show that personalized thresholding improves detection accuracy by 2-3% compared to fixed thresholds, while CNN-based classification achieves 99.1% accuracy for eye state detection and 98.8% for yawning detection, demonstrating the effectiveness of combining classical metrics with deep learning for robust real-time driver monitoring.