Disclosure is a method for detecting the safety driving state of a driver, the method comprises the following steps: (a) detecting the current sight direction of a driver in real time and acquiring a scene image signal in a front view field of the driver when a vehicle runs; (b) processing the acquired current road scene image signal according to a visual attention calculation model to obtain the expected attention distribution of the driver under the current road scene; and (c) performing fusion analysis on the real-time detected current sight direction of the driver in the step (a) and the calculated expected attention distribution of the driver in step (b), and judging whether the current driver is in a normal driving state and whether the driver can timely make a proper response to the sudden road traffic accident. The device is used for implementing the method and has the advantages of simple principle, easy realization, direct reflection of the real driving state of a driver, and improvement of the driving safety.