Patent ID: 8593288

Claim:
A method for detecting a state of a driver, the method comprising: recording a curve over time of a signal of at least one vehicle characteristic; determining whether the recorded curve meets at least one predetermined criterion; and responsive to determining in the determining step that the at least one predetermined criterion is met by the recorded curve, generating a signal which shows the driver state as being inattentive; wherein the inattentive driver state is determined, and the generation of the signal showing the inattentive state is performed, responsive to detecting in the determining step at least one of: a sudden increase of a steering angle change after a phase of slight change; a temporal correspondence between driver performance of a steering correction and at least one of an actual lane departure and a threatened lane departure; and occurrence of driver performance of a steering correction at a predetermined frequency, each of the steering corrections including a sudden increase in at least one of steering angle and steering angle change.