- Search Cartoons
- Comic Archive
-
Payne
Store
Henry Payne RSS
Making cars ‘easy for the queasy’
Posted by hpayne on April 25, 2014
General Motors engineer Matt Gohlke conducts a test with Urwah Khan, 6, for the Human Factors group during General Motors Annual Kids Day event Thursday at the Tech Center in Warren. (Jeffrey Sauger photos for Buick)
Any parent knows the terrors of what General Motors calls the “puke zone” on a long road trip. The children are happily reading, or playing on their laptop, or watching a DVD and the next thing you know, you’ve got a motion sick kid and a huge interior cleaning bill.
Fortunately, automakers feel your pain.
GM has enlisted the children of its own employees to improve the location of its ceiling-mounted, backseat DVD players. And Ford Motor Co. testers are guarding against the inevitable by making vehicles more — um — spew resistant.
DVD players are customarily located in the ceiling or on the back of seats (see the Dodge Durango or Hyundai Equus) because scientific research has determined that if a passenger’s eyes are focused on a fixed point — and can see the passing landscape outside the vehicle — then their brains know they’re moving.
“But if our eyes are at a downward angle and do not see the view outside the vehicle, our bodies become sensitive to motion and increase the chance of sickness,” says Don Shreves, manager of GM’s Human Factors engineering group which studies how customers interact with vehicles.
With GM’s three-row, midsize 2014 Buick Enclave SUV, the Human Factors team took its research one step further. They put kids to work during the company’s Take Your Child to Work Day. The goal: determine the best placement of the DVD screen to increase view-ability and decrease motion sickness.
GM researchers set up a sliding track on the Enclave’s roof that could move the DVD player fore and aft. They then monitored the responses of more than 75 kids to determine when the screen was too close or too far away. After crunching the data, Human Factors turned the results over to Buick’s vehicle engineering team, which integrated the findings into the SUV’s final design.
Chrysler also has done extensive research with the result that the rear-seat entertainment system in the 2015 Dodge Durango has been relocated to the backs of the front seats from the ceiling center console. “Chrysler Group takes seriously the issue of passenger comfort to ‘make things easy for the queasy,’ ” says Chrysler spokesman Eric Mayne.
But what of the inevitable backseat disaster?
Ford has it covered. The company’s researchers pour milkshakes down seats to make sure seat belts buckle, and that upholstery and nooks and crannies can be properly cleaned of grit, drinks, and, yes, vomit.
“Accidents happen,” a Ford spokesman said. “We test crevices with crumbs and crap to make sure seats are easily cleaned.”
Automakers’ sensitivity to rear seat occupants is consistent with the American habit of living in our cars. From soccer moms to family vacations, we spend more time commuting in our vehicles than any other major industrialized nation, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
As a result, even the back seats of pickups have become more refined, while giant SUVs such as the Chevy Tahoe and Cadillac Escalade are outfitted with sophisticated, magnetic-ride shock absorber systems to cushion backseat occupants who once felt like they were riding a bucking bronco.
Like the old, rear-facing station wagon third-row seat, forward-facing third-row seats are increasingly in demand by SUV-buying families — but the tendency toward lightless caves has widened the puke zone.
Designers for vehicles like the Enclave have responded with optional two-panel sun-roofs, as well as providing third-row passengers with their own air conditioning and audio controls.
The attention to detail will save Americans on cleaning bills — and having to stock the back seats with barf bags.