Overall Car Seat Discomfort Onset during Long Duration Driving Trials

Abstract: Mansfield et al. (2014) proposed a multi-factorial conceptual model for overall car seat discomfort that includes static, dynamic and temporal factors and suggests that overall car seat discomfort increases with time. Driving duration has been reported to significantly influence driver discomfort and long term evaluations of driver discomfort are necessary when assessing the performance of a car seat. This paper reports a laboratory study where 10 subjects (6 male and 4 female) conducted 140 minutes driving on a dynamic driving simulator and reported their discomfort every 10 minutes. It is observed that discomfort increases with time; however the rate of discomfort onset is shown to decrease with extended duration of driving (>70 minutes), and therefore it is observed that discomfort does not increase linearly across the 140 minute trial. It is concluded that drivers may alter their behaviour to cope with increased levels of discomfort as driving duration increases and suggests that future work should aim to investigate the theory that participants move in the seat with increasing frequency as overall car seat discomfort increases. Furthermore, future work should aim to validate the conceptual model proposed by Mansfield et al. (2014) against greatly extended driving duration and should aim to incorporate the change in rate of discomfort onset observed in this study when predicting long term driver discomfort.

Keywords: Automotive Ergonomics, Overall Car Seat Discomfort, Driver Discomfort, Long Term Driving.

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe100051

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