Kinetosis - motion sickness will be the drawback of self-driving cars
We all are habituated to travel by car or some other closed vehicles. Sometime when you are travelling you might have felt dizziness or vomit. why?
Generally travelling in a car may be boring for passengers than drivers. So, most people try to use that time for their work like reading, watching movie, preparation of other work and many more. Unfortunately this is not every time in favorable. Most people suffer with motion sickness. Person fills dizzy and queasy most of time when reading or writing in car. You've had it happen to you too, right?
Motion sickness or you can say Kinetosis or travel sickness or seasickness. Seasickness is similar but you're in ship rather than car. In most of the cases this problem is faced by passengers who are reading, writing, sleeping or doing other works. In self-driving cars if people don't drive then they might try to complete their extra works. So, possibilities of getting motion sickness will be more. Motion sickness happens when we are sitting in running car, our inner body organs feels forward motion and visual system says our brain you are in rest. This mismatch between vestibular syatem and visual system confuses our brain and results in motion sickness. Driver looks continuously on road and aware with surrounding, it means his visual system sends message exactly what vestibular system feels. So, in case motion sickness is not problematic.
Solutions
First solution for the motion sickness is DNA. There are some genes which are prone to have motion sickness. It is also differed by different people. Some of them have DNAs which more prone to get motion sickness and some doesn't get it. If you want to safe from motion sickness you should have those DNAs but it is not in our hand.
If you've observed that if windows are opened and fresh air is circulating in car then you have less chances of motion sickness then fully closed car. When air blows on face, sensory system senses you are in motion, motion sickness is avoided in this case also. As we seen above driver doesn't get sickness because his vestibualr and visual systems sends same messages. Same case is with passenger sitting next to driver because he also can see motion of car. But passengers at back seats can't see perfect scenario and they get motion sickness. If we could be able to design car in such way that every passenger in car can see perfectly what is going on then motion sickness will be reduced.
Another solution is medication. There are many medicines which distracts our mind from getting motion sickness. So, possible solution can be that you take a pill before travelling. Now you decide this is reliable or not.
Researches says 15-25% more chances to get motion sickness while you are travelling with self-driving car. Till now there are no such solution by which you get rid of motion sickness. Motion sickness is going to be major factor against buying or using self-driving car. It is like you are paying double to get sickness. May be there will some solutions which are reliable and helpful to get rid of motion sickness and then people will be willing to buy self-driving cars.
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