Comfortable driving postures for Koreans

The improvement of automotive seating systems, particularly for the driver, has been the subject of intense interest for many years. This study observes comfortable driving postures for Koreans. An experiment is conducted to navigate observed comfortable driving postures. A driving posture monitoring system (DPMS), consisting of seat, computer, power motor and controller, is developed for this experiment. When subjects adjust to the seat in order to find their comfortable postures, this system records the translation range and angle of each part of the driver seat. Also, the three- dimensional motion analysis system is employed to obtain postural angles of segments for comfortable driving postures of subjects. In addition, anthropometric data for each subject are directly measured, and they are used to investigate relationships between anthropometric characteristics (body segment lengths), preferred postural angles and seat adjustment level. After the obtained relationship is statistically tested, comfortable driving postures and seat adjustment levels according to gender are discussed. Relevance to industry: Obtained relationships between anthropometric characteristics, preferred postural angles and seat adjustment levels can be applied to seat designs for the driving comfort, safety and convenient layout of car interior. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V.