Challenges for Driver Action Recognition with Face Masks

Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) are enabling technologies in Intelligent Transportation Systems. Modern ADAS include algorithms to classify drivers' actions and distractions, aiming at identifying situations in which the driver is inattentive. Such systems typically include components for Driver Action Recognition (DAR) and Visual Distraction Classification (VDC), which prevent risky situations during semi-autonomous driving. DAR and VDC often rely on cameras that track the driver and classify actions based on image recognition algorithms. The COVID-19 pandemic has changed several common social behaviours, including the widespread use of face mask even during driving. In some cases (taxi, bus) face covering policies are compulsory in many legislations. We here show that these behavioural changes challenge state-of-the-art DAR and VDC systems, with the average F1-score in some scenarios dropping by around 30% when exposed to images of drivers wearing masks. Noting a lack of public datasets to update the ML classifiers performing such tasks, we contribute Maskdar, a dataset for Action Recognition of Drivers wearing face Masks. Finally, using Maskdarwe show the importance of including subjects with face masks in datasets for DAR.