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 uses an inward-facing camera and AI to analyze driver behavior in real-time.
To get started with Distracted Driving Detection, review the following workflows to optimize its use and customize it for your fleet:
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Review Event Detection Best Practices: For the most accurate AI Event Detection, review the AI Event Detection and Distracted Driving recommendations and best practices.
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Customize Event Detection: By default, the speed threshold for Distracted Driving is 25 mph, in-cab audio alerts are disabled, and the duration threshold of the Inattentive Driving detection is set to Medium (9 seconds). To customize these settings for your fleet, see Configure Distracted Driving Detection.
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Set Alerts: In addition to in-cab audio alerts for drivers, you can also configure an alert to receive an email notification or an SMS when an Distracted Driving event occurs.
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.
Distracted Driving Detection can sometimes trigger false positives or inaccurate alerts. To enable accurate detection, encourage your drivers to observe the following best practices:
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Avoid covering the driver's head by removing sunglasses, hats, masks, and objects hanging in the view of the camera.
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Ensure adequate lighting in the driver cab. Extremely dark or bright conditions can hinder detection.
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Keep hands away from the driver's face. Any obstruction of the face can confuse the detector.
The dual-facing dash cam must be mounted and installed correctly (CM32, CM34) and the driver face and torso must be clearly visible by the inward-facing dash cam lens for Samsara AI to accurately detect distracted driving. See Best Practices for more guidance to ensure accurate detection.
An Inattentive Driving event triggers when:
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Driving speed is above 25mph (by default).
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The dash cam detects an inattentive driver behavior, such as 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.
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Scenario |
Example |
Triggers Detection |
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Driver lowers head to look at phone |
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Driver lowers head to adjust radio |
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Driver’s head bounces up and down |
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Driver looks down at food/hands/lap/phone repeatedly |
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Driver adjusts hat/scratches head/looks left or right while lowering head |
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Driver uses cell phone without lowering head pose |
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Driver appears drowsy, yawns, or has eyelids closed while head remains straight ahead |
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Driver is eating or drinking, but head remains straight ahead |
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Driver is looking outside the window |
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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:
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Inattentive Driving: Detects abnormal driver behavior indicating inattention, such as drivers eating, texting, or lowering their head to adjust the radio. Given the high volume of events, especially at speeds of 10 mph or less, a maximum of 48 events per driver per day are uploaded to the Safety Inbox (up to two inattentive driving events per hour).
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Mobile Usage: Detects phone usage, including when drivers hold a phone to their ear without lowering their head. Due to the high volume of events, especially at speeds of 10 mph or less, a maximum of 24 events per driver per day are uploaded to the Safety Inbox (up to three Mobile Usage events per hour).
To configure settings to selected vehicles, see Safety Settings for Individual Vehicles or use the following workflow to configure settings to all vehicles in your fleet:
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Select the Settings icon (
) at the bottom of your Fleet menu to view dashboard settings.
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From Fleet > Safety > Event Detection, locate the AI Event Detection settings.
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Configure the Distracted Driving Detection settings for
Inattentive Driving:-
In-cab audio alerts: By default, in-cab audio alerts are
OFF. ChooseONto 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.
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Severity: Represents the allowable distraction time before a safety event is uploaded to the Safety Inbox. Higher severity allows longer distraction periods before an event is generated. The distraction period ends when the driver returns to a normal state. Choose from the following severity levels:
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Low: 7 seconds (2 beeps)
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Medium: (Default) 9 seconds (2 beeps plus voice coaching)
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High: 13 seconds (2 beeps plus voice coaching)
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Configure the Distracted Driving Detection settings for
Mobile Usage:-
In-cab audio alerts: By default, in-cab audio alerts are
OFF. ChooseONto 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.
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Save to confirm the setting.
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