SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. — Samsara Inc. has launched its Drowsiness Detection feature into general availability for customers globally.
According to a company media release, Drowsiness Detection uses Samsara’s comprehensive AI models—trained on its large-scale dataset—to proactively detect when signs of drowsiness occur. Then, it triggers real-time in-cab audio alerts for drivers, while notifying managers via text or email to triage fatigue-related events in the moment. These insights can be viewed as aggregated reports within the Samsara Platform, allowing managers to analyze patterns of fatigue across their fleet, focus on driver coaching, and ultimately reduce drowsy driving to improve road safety.
“It’s hard to detect when someone is truly drowsy,” said Evan Welbourne, vice president of AI and Data at Samsara. “It’s more than a single behavior, like yawning or having your eyes closed. Drowsiness can be less common than other risky driving behaviors, so accurate detection is only as good as the data that feeds and trains AI models. That’s where the scale of Samsara’s data sets our solution apart. We train our models on more than 38 billion minutes of video footage within our platform to provide high accuracy and impact for our customers.”
The National Safety Council reports that drivers are three times more likely to be in a crash if they are fatigued, and according to the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, more than 17% of all fatal crashes involve a drowsy driver. In the commercial trucking industry, drivers are even more at risk given long hours and unpredictable road conditions.
“That’s why preventing drowsiness is a top priority for Samsara’s tens of thousands of customers,” the company said in the release. “While advancements in AI and machine learning have made proactive alerts possible, drowsiness remains an incredibly nuanced behavior to train AI models to detect.”
To ensure accuracy, Samsara’s comprehensive Drowsiness Detection is trained to consider several behaviors that indicate fatigue, in alignment with leading and clinically validated standards for defining drowsiness, according to the release. These behaviors include: head nodding, slouching, prolonged eye closure, yawning, rubbing eyes and more. Yawning alone is often not a sufficient detector of drowsiness. An analysis among early adopters of Samsara’s Drowsiness Detection found that approximately 77% of drowsy driving events were detected by behaviors other than yawning alone.
Samsara first announced Drowsiness Detection at its annual Beyond conference in June, which gathered more than 2,000 physical operations leaders across the industry. Since then, customers have already experienced meaningful impact. For example, one of the largest oilfield services companies in the U.S. has seen a significant decrease in how often drivers are falling asleep during shifts since using Samsara’s Drowsiness Detection, according to the release.
“We used to have multiple drivers falling asleep at the wheel,” said Samsara’s vice president of Health Safety and Environment. “Now, we’ve gone as long as 30 days without a single driver falling asleep due to these alerts.”
Samsara’s petabyte-scale dataset collects more than 10 trillion data points each year and is used to train AI models that automate workflows, accelerate time to value, and provide personalized, actionable insights for customers. In one year alone, Samsara’s Video-Based Safety solutions have helped prevent more than 200,000 crashes among customers worldwide, according to the release.
Drowsiness Detection is now generally available globally to customers. To learn more, visit samsara.com/products/safety/dash-cam
Dana Guthrie is an award-winning journalist who has been featured in multiple newspapers, books and magazines across the globe. She is currently based in the Atlanta, Georgia, area.
