International Journal of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Vol 16, No 4: August 2026

A convolutional neural network -based driver monitoring system for drowsiness and distraction detection

Sara Benkouider (Université Amar Telidji de Laghouat)
Nasreddine Lagraa (Université Amar Telidji de Laghouat)



Article Info

Publish Date
01 Aug 2026

Abstract

Road accidents caused by driver drowsiness and distraction are a major global concern, as fatigue and inattention significantly slow reaction time and increase accident risk. To address this issue, this paper proposes a vision-based driver monitoring system using facial analysis from an on-board camera. The system detects the face and extracts key regions of interest, including the eyes, mouth, and head, which are analyzed independently using convolutional neural networks. Temporal information is captured by aggregating the convolutional neural network (CNN) outputs over a fixed time window. Drowsiness is estimated by fusing eye and mouth features with a multilayer perceptron, while distraction is detected based on head movements. An important advantage of the proposed approach is its robustness to partial input loss, allowing the system to remain functional even when some facial regions are missing or occluded, such as when wearing sunglasses or face masks. Experimental results show high detection accuracy, reaching 97.3% for drowsiness and 98% for distraction under ideal conditions, with only limited performance degradation in challenging scenarios. These results confirm the suitability of the proposed system for real-time driver monitoring applications.

Copyrights © 2026






Journal Info

Abbrev

IJECE

Publisher

Subject

Computer Science & IT Electrical & Electronics Engineering

Description

International Journal of Electrical and Computer Engineering (IJECE, ISSN: 2088-8708, a SCOPUS indexed Journal, SNIP: 1.001; SJR: 0.296; CiteScore: 0.99; SJR & CiteScore Q2 on both of the Electrical & Electronics Engineering, and Computer Science) is the official publication of the Institute of ...