Hold me tight! Effect of active seat belt tension on preventing passenger motion sickness

In the current context of increasing levels of driving automation for passenger vehicles, addressing the issue of motion sickness has become a major challenge in the perspective of optimising motion comfort and the ride experience. 30 motion sickness-sensitive participants experienced a 20-minute passenger ride consisting of a series of cornering manoeuvres, with a focus on a visuomotor gaming activity. In a within-subjects design involving two experimental conditions, acceleration-coded seat belt tensions were generated as intervention. It was hypothesised that administering the intervention would result in lower levels of motion sickness severity and reduce postural sway. The tensions significantly reduced postural sway during cornering and met good user acceptance. In addition, significant gender differences were observed. Postural sway was more reduced in female participants, but only male participants exhibited lower motion sickness when experiencing the seat belt tensions as intervention.