Field Study to Evaluate Driver Fatigue on Air-Inflated Truck Seat Cushions

This study conducted a series of road tests with a commercial trucking service to better understand the relationship between vehicle seat design and driver fatigue, improve two newly proposed objective methods for evaluating driver fatigue, and provide design guidelines for evaluating and improving vehicle seat characteristics in terms of driver fatigue. Based on these results, we find that the air-inflated seat cushions tested are preferred to foam. We also show that the objective measure aPcrms highlights characteristic differences between seat cushions not highlighted by previously existing objective measures. This indicates that aPcrms is a useful measure and should be considered when evaluating the subjective quality of seat cushion designs under dynamic conditions, such as those existing in commercial truck driving.

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