SET-DGCN: An end-to-end electroencephalography-based fatigue detection method for young drivers

Driver fatigue poses a critical threat to global road safety, particularly among young drivers. Nevertheless, policy-level interventions remain fragmented due to the lack of reliable and deployable detection technologies. Bridging this gap requires accurate, interpretable, and real-time fatigue monitoring systems capable of informing practical decision-making in transportation safety management. To address this challenge, we propose an end-to-end EEG-based fatigue detection model, Scale-Enhanced Transformer and Dynamic Graph Convolutional Network (SET-DGCN). The model captures multi-scale temporal dependencies and spatial brain-region interactions by integrating convolutional embeddings, attention mechanisms, and learnable graph structures. Extensive evaluations on both a driving simulation dataset and the publicly available SEED-VIG dataset confirm that SET-DGCN outperforms mainstream convolutional neural network (CNN)-based, graph convolutional network (GCN)-based, and Transformer-based models in terms of accuracy and F1-score, while maintaining strong cross-subject generalization. To enhance both interpretability and application relevance, a component-level attribution method (COAR) is employed to evaluate the functional contribution of model modules, while SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP) analysis is used to uncover brain region–specific patterns across fatigue stages. Based on these neural insights, a set of multi-level policy and design recommendations is proposed, ranging from infrastructure enhancements to adaptive in-vehicle systems and individualized interventions, to provide a comprehensive framework for mitigating fatigue among young drivers in real-world transportation contexts.