A French specialist explains how motion sickness, or motion sickness, could increase in the near future with the transformation of cars.
- Today, 25 to 30% of the population is regularly prone to motion sickness and 60 to 70% of travelers would experience it at least once in their life.
- It is on board cars that it is most widespread: passengers are more sensitive to it than the driver due to a lack of anticipation of trajectories.
- Technological upheavals such as electrification, digitalization and automation of vehicles could accentuate the symptoms of motion sickness.
It is estimated that 25 to 30% of the population is regularly subject to motion sickness, also called “kinetosis”. A figure probably underestimated, as this phenomenon is poorly understood, as explained by the German researcher William Emond. This doctoral student on the subject of reducing car motion sickness at the University of Technology of Belfort-Montbéliard, returns in an article by The Conversation on the question of how motion sickness will increase in the coming years.
What is motion sickness?
Motion sickness is often summarized in symptoms of malaise (nausea, sweating, pallor, hypothermia, headaches, vomiting, etc.), while it can also manifest itself in milder forms such as drowsiness, apathy or decrease in cognitive abilities. 60 to 70% of travelers would experience it at least once in their life.
“It is on board the cars that are most frequently borne. Passengers are more sensitive to it than the driver. by lack of anticipation of trajectories. The conflicts between the information brought by our different senses disturbing our balance and the difficulties in adjusting our posture to adapt to it are the two main theories to explain it in a general way”says the researcher.
Electric cars: less cues and more sudden movements
However, while the industry is undergoing a technological metamorphosis, upheavals such as electrification, digitization and vehicle automation bring their share of benefits… as well as new problems. “Some of these developments risk creating or accentuating this famous perceived imbalance and further limiting users’ ability to anticipate. As a result, they amplify the risk of feeling symptoms of malaise more often”says William Emond.
First of all, electrification reduces the passenger’s cues and accentuates sudden movements. “An electric car motor is more linear and quieter than a combustion engine. This advantage has a downside: it can hinder users in their ability to assimilate the movement of the vehicle”underlines the specialist.
“The adoption of regenerative braking (allowing to recover electric range during deceleration) can also be disruptive. The decelerations induced by this system, usually low frequency and sometimes frank, can be particularly destabilizing. Just like, conversely, the jerks of the accelerator, likely to induce sudden movements due to the high and available torque of these engines”he adds.
The risks of digitizing the interior, with more distractions
Another risky technological advance: the increasing presence of screens, ever larger and ever more numerous, inside vehicles. Because beyond their technological capacity and their attractiveness in the eyes of the user, these screens “overload” it with visual information.
“Their omnipresence encourages distraction, again at the risk of creating a conflict between visual and inertial information about motion received by the body. By concentrating on the content of screens, a passenger restricts his ability to assimilate the ‘right’ visual signals, which allow him to correctly perceive his position and speed in space – namely the view outside the vehicle. This is the reason why it is not advisable to concentrate on a book or a screen during a hectic journey”, develops William Emond. A trend towards digitization which should undoubtedly increase in the coming years, with vehicles which could even associate screens with windows or suggest virtual reality integration.
The effects of vehicle automation
Finally, the last problem for the future: the automation of vehicles. “The driving task, the best way to anticipate trajectories and limit symptoms, is destined to disappear in the long term”continues the researcher. Our susceptibility to being subject to motion sickness depends in part on our habit of being a simple passengerregular drivers might thus find themselves susceptible to motion sickness to the point of being unfit to travel in highly autonomous vehicles.”
In addition, with the disappearance of the driving position, the passenger compartments will be redesigned to become more welcoming, like living rooms on wheels. These new configurations will offer more freedom to passengers who could, for example, orient their seat back to the road to chat with other occupants. “However, in the collective unconscious, sitting back to the road is associated with an increased risk of discomfort. Although experiments have shown that it makes no differencethat idea may constitute a psychological bias facilitating the onset of symptoms”remarks William Emond.
