Abstract
About two in three people have experienced carsickness at some point in their life (Reason & Brand, 1975). Little is known about current numbers of sufferers, cultural differences, or which modulating factors are being perceived as most relevant. Therefore, given a global increase of interest in carsickness driven by the development of automated vehicles, this survey intended to assess the status quo of carsickness in different parts of the world. We conducted an online survey with N = 4,479 participants in Brazil, China, Germany, UK and USA. 46% of participants indicated they had experienced some degree of carsickness in the past five years as a passenger in a car. When including childhood experiences, this rate increased to 59%, comparable to the 1975 findings by Reason and Brand. The highest and lowest incidence of carsickness was reported in China and Germany, respectively. In all countries, men and older participants reported a lower incidence of carsickness as compared to females and younger participants. The main modulating factors were found to be driving dynamics, visual activities, and low air quality. This study showed that carsickness still affects about 2/3 of passengers and discusses how its occurrence relates to in-transit activities and other modes of transport. The research provides a sound basis to further study how carsickness develops and to investigate countermeasures to potentially reduce it.
Highlights
1.1 Motion SicknessExposure to motion can lead to motion sickness, for instance as a result of being a car passenger on a winding road
It can be seen that the predominant use of either public transport or of a car/truck/van as a recruitment criterion was successful in enabling a sufficient variance in use of different transport modes
While busses were associated with similar motion sickness as cars, other modes of transport such as planes, trains, and trams were reportedly less problematic
Summary
1.1 Motion SicknessExposure to motion can lead to motion sickness, for instance as a result of being a car passenger on a winding road. Already at the end of the 19th century it was observed that totally deaf people were insensitive to motion sickness (Irwin, 1881; James, 1882). These so called ,labyrinthine defective’ patients have been shown not to suffer from sickness induced by visual motion while being physically stationary (Cheung, Howard, Nedzelski & Landolt, 1989; Cheung, Howard & Money, 1991; Johnson, Sunahara & Landolt, 1999). On the other hand, do suffer from motion sickness (Graybiel, 1970), as do sighted people with eyes closed (Bos, MacKinnon & Patterson, 2005)
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