TOKYO - TOYOTA Motor said on Tuesday it would soon equip vehicles with a system to verify that drivers' eyes are fully open to make sure they are not asleep at the wheel.

It has given its pre-crash safety system the eye-monitoring function in addition to its current ability to watch the direction of a driver's face, the company said.

The eye monitoring, billed as a world first by Toyota, will be offered in vehicles scheduled for launch in Japan in the near future.

It 'uses a driver-monitoring camera and image-processing computer to determine the position of the driver's upper and lower eyelids,' Japan's largest automaker said in a statement.

If the safety system senses that a collision is imminent, it issues an early warning to the driver. -- AFP