Sensing phone use of motorcycle drivers

Due to safety reasons, using mobile phones while driving is prohibited in many countries. Research has also shown that motorcycle riders are 20 times more likely to be killed in a crash than vehicle occupants. Therefore, it is more critical to restrict the use of mobile phones of motorcycle drivers than car drivers. There are some studies that focus on how to distinguish phone use between a driver and other passengers in a car. The techniques used for cars, however, are not always applicable to motorcycles. In this paper, we propose a way to detect phone use of motorcycle drivers. By using two low-cost Bluetooth emitters, mobile phones of the driver and the passenger can measure the signal strengths and decide their locations. We have conducted extensive experiments with various smartphones. The results show that on average we can achieve 96% accuracy.