# Automatically identifying a mobile phone user's position within a vehicle

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2111.06306 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.06306/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 2 of its 19 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 11 Nov 2021.

## Builds on (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [Batch Normalization: Accelerating Deep Network Training by Reducing Internal Covariate Shift](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1502.03167/) (2015)
- [MobileNetV2: Inverted Residuals and Linear Bottlenecks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.04381/) (2018)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Traffic-related injuries and fatalities are major health risks in the United States. Mobile phone use while driving quadruples the risk for a motor vehicle crash. This work demonstrates the feasibility of using the mobile phone camera to passively detect the location of the phone's user within a vehicle. In a large, varied dataset we were able correctly identify if the user was in the driver's seat or one of the passenger seats with 94.9% accuracy. This model could be used by application developers to selectively change or lock functionality while a user is driving, but not if the user is a passenger in a moving vehicle.