Yesterday for the first time I went in a Fiat Croma Taxi, nothing special about that but when I got out of the back I felt quite travel sick... when I was younger my folks had a Ford Granada with rubber strips or grounding strips I think they were called
So why do we use them any more ?, did they work and what has changed to stop them being sold ? and would they make a difference to a Fiat Croma ?
{subject header made less vague}
Edited by Dynamic Dave on 17/10/2007 at 19:53
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Only ever felt sick in the back of a 205 driven by a lady friend of ours. She only read the road about 6" in front, so was either using full brakes or full throttle.....
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i think motion sickness is caused by the eyes telling the brain that your moving whilst the fluid in your ears tells the brain your not moving so it gets confused , then the brain thinks its been poisoned and decides to jetison any possible contaminants in the digestive system or something along those lines
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I was reliably informed that when 5, I puked all over the back seat of my uncle's brand new Daimler Majestic in the early 1950s....Fortunately leather cleans easily although Axminster carpet is a bit more work!
madf
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In the 1950s I used to get car sick. Cars then frequently had chains dangling from the back bumper. The theory I think was that it earthed the car and discharged any static electricity, but it can't have worked for long because the end link wore away very quickly.
I think any effect was psychological.
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"In the 1950s I used to get car sick. Cars then frequently had chains dangling.."
You think they made it worse, then..? :-)
I've never been able to resolve this idea satisfactorily - lots of people bought them (and the later rubberised versions) but I didn't get to speak to any of them on the subject. I've been charged up with a Van de Graaf generator, though, and that didn't make me car sick!
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Sitting in the front allows you to focus on the horizon thus reducing the effects of travel sickness - driving is the best cure of all. I suggest its the fact you were in the back of the vehicle which brought back sickness.
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"the fact you were in the back"
Yes, I have trouble with that, too. Don't like coaches much either. Taxis may be a special case, though, as there are probably all sorts of odours to mess with your senses, too...
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I used to get car sick sometimes as a child, but my sister was far worse. My wife's sister was reputed as a child to vomit as soon as she got into a car, before it had even moved.
The first three cars my father had were all Admiralty service pool vehicles, a Ford V8 of about 1942 vintage, a Humber Snipe with fat desert tyres and a rather disappointing Hillman Minx (1946 or so). Despite the exciting squealing of its tyres round all corners, the motion of the Ford made us sick. The Humber only made my sister sick. The Hillman was worse, probably because it seemed so cramped and proletarian after the other two.
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to throw the theory into confusion
i dont get travel sick when driving
i do get travel sick if a front seat passenger
i dont get travel sick if a rear passenger
same on coaches if sat at front or back ,i can feel travelly
if sat in middle im fine
trains/planes no problem
i also think its an inner ear thing though related to vision
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I have only once ever felt a bit dodgy in a moving vehicle, and that was in an Espace with possibly the worst driver I have ever been driven by. He spent the whole time putting his foot hard on the accelerator to take the vehicle up to 75mph, and then easing off sharply until it dropped back to 65mph, then hard down up to 75mph and foot right off until 65.
London all the way back to Cambridge. Ugh.
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As kids we were told to look out of the windows if we felt sick, my parents theory was you needed to be able to see the horizon. Didn't always work for some of my friends or my brothers from time to time. One of my brothers friends would be physically sick on all journeys, even on quite short distance trips!
AFAIK I've never been car sick, not even in the back of a Mk3 Cortina (didnt they have a reputation for it?), as a child I would constantly stare out of the windows looking at other cars.
My Dad used to fit those earthing strips and they were rubbish IMO. Can't remember which car, might have been the first Mk2 Cavalier my Dad had, we had two strips fitted and always used to get terrible static shocks when getting out and closing the doors.
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I tried one of those anti-static strips, because I'm forever getting static shocks when I get out of a car. The only effcts I noticed were:
1. It used to make a hell of a noise when it was cold. It seemed to harden up as the temperature dropped towards freezing.
2. Passengers would be totally un-nerved by the racket the damn thing used to make when it was cold.
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My wife is always getting static shocks of her car.She went into an accessory shop to buy a an earthing strip (which does not cure the problem incidently)the young lad serving said that she should not wear nylon nickers, my wife retorted "Ido not wear nylon nickers only the finest silk" apparently he went so bright red and got flustered the young girl on the other till took the micky out of him.
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rustbucket (the original)
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would those earthing straps nullify any benefits of the faraday cage principle? ie protection in a vehicle from a lightning strike?...oh and opal fruits given to children before a long journey gives the vomit a more pleasing aroma!
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Finest silk also generates static - it doesn't have to be nylon.
The only time I have ever felt ill in a car was sitting in my car on the still moving car deck of a cross channel ferry. 'Tis a bit weird feeling the movement of the vehicle when a. the engine is off and b. it is not moving relative to the surroundings (the doors of the ferry were still shut)
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The earthing strips don't make any difference as the car is earthed through the tyres which are electrically conductive.
The reason you get an electric shock when you get out of a car and touch the door handle is that you have built up a static electric charge on yourself through sitting in the interior. Manmade materials are good for building up static electricity and a car interior is full of plastics and nylon based materials. When you get out and touch the door handle, the charge you have built up is discharged through the electrically conducting metal door, through the car body, through the chassis and through the tyres to earth.
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Wear footwear with rubber soles and heels if you want to build up static. I had to abandon my sandals with rubber soles when using a hire car in Arizona because the problem was so bad. I switched to all-leather shoes and that did the trick.
Edited by Roger Jones on 17/10/2007 at 19:16
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"travel sick"
On a ship in the middle of the North Sea in a force 8 gale in 1964!
Well you didn't ask about car sickness!
It was not a car ferry!
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Phil
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Travel sick on a ferry & worse was a passenger in a landrover discovery!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!, Oh my word how can people actually travel in one of these or RangeRovers. Wollow with a capital W! has to be the looks cause it sure aint comfort.The air assist helped in allowing me not to have to fall so far out when we stopped!
Never again.
Doc
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Sitting in the back of my car trying to watch a DVD on the seat back TVs being driven home from a rather good dinner at a mountain restaurant high up in the French Alps.
Combination of watching a TV screen in the dark, heavy food and seriously twisty roads.
Oh, and a shed load of wine
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Only a couple of months ago. I called a taxi and one of those awful Peugeot Eurotaxis arrived. Being an average 6'2" I cannot see forward in these. This combined with very jerky driving made me feel quite unwell in only a few miles. They area truly awful vehicle in all respects!
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Summer just gone, rear seat passenger.
Been prone to it ever since I was a nipper.
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Every single time I get in a car, unless I'm the driver.
I was hoping I'd grow out of it but, if anything, it's getting worse. Tried all the remedies and the only ones that work are ready salted crisps (not great when you don't really like crisps though) and those bands with the bumps on (but I think that's psychological more than anything). That and a well perfected art of falling asleep within minutes of getting in a car!
I wouldn't even entertain the idea of sitting in the back of a car, reading a map or even fiddling with the radio from the passenger seat. And I recently discovered that I can't use a sat nav if I'm driving because switching between looking at that and at the road can set me off. I am very very rarely sick, but I've always thought feeling sick was a lot worse than actually being sick.
Strangley I don't get coach sick but I feel terrible on trains.
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Stugeron is good, but a mite soporific.
Dramamine, too, but with the same caveat. Mrs Mucker still tells the tale of how I took one a little too late into a train journey to Cordoba, and then fell asleep over lunch (fortunately staying upright).
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Take an immense dose of ginger. My brother, who had the ability to be sick on a ferry pier consumed an entire bottle of ginger tablets before going on the north sea ferry and has never been travel sick since.
Mythbusters also showed that ginger worked really well.
I don't get travel sick unless I try to read small writing on a windy road. My brother once vomited into a plastic bowl and emptied it out of the window on the motorway - right over the open-topped car behind. He had to turn his windscreen wipers on, but we didn't see what happened next!
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Personally never, even in North Sea/Channel Storms.
All my kids and SWMBO have got/get travel sick, two have grown out of it, one (and SWMBO) takes 'Sea Legs' and one is just sick!
However we have a supply of 2L ice cream containers and lids in the back of the car, he uses one, and it goes into the bin at the next layby/service station etc, no mess ever. Usually only one a trip and then he feels better, sometimes twice.
On a different tack, do those of you who are travel sick suffer from migranes - SWMBO and my dad do - a link is interesting.
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When us kids were small we used to always be travel sick, maybe that was because my dad always had Cortina estates and there were 3 in back seat and 2 in the boot......
However, one year my dad changed his car for a Peugeot 504 family estate and he vows that from the day he got the car, none of us were ever sick again. He always put it down to the fact that the seats were all a lot firmer than the Cortina (the middle row IIRC was 3 separate seats a la MPVs of today), and the fact that the seating position was higher so we were able to look out the windows better.
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2007 Seat Altea XL 2.0 TDI (140) Stylance
2005 Skoda Fabia vrS
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No migraines here, but David, you've just reminded me that I did used to take ginger capsules as a kid and I think they worked. Must look into that again.
Bobby - you're right. Cars with harder suspension or just a more 'rumbly' drive, are far less likely to make me feel sick than others.
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Guess you are more likely to get travel sick in the back as you have less view of the outside. But softer suspension must be a major factor when comparing modern cars with older cars.
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I used to suffer terribly as a child, dad kept the car in a garage & it got so bad that I remember once simply getting in the car & the car smell made me sick before dad even stsrted the engine.
I still get travel sick 40 years later as a passenger if the driver has a heavy right foot, my record was a 1 mile white knuckle ride through the side streets of a hilly city, when we stopped, I was almost sick, took me 2 hours to recover & then he gave me a lift back.
It is worrying because whenever I am going anywhere as a passenger, I have the added worry before the journey of will I feel ill when we complete the journey & if you ask he driver to drive more gently as you suffer from travel sickness, some take it as a criticism of their driving.
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I googled for car sickness and found this.
"Car sickness is best avoided by focusing your eyes outside the vehicle - so that the visual signals to the brain confirm what the inner ear is saying about movement. For this reason car drivers are never car sick. In a coach or bus, try to sit close to the front."
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L\'escargot.
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I remember those plastic grounding strips - that wore away so quickly they only touched when you were fully loaded. In the '80s I had them fitted to my cars as my (then) young son complained, once, of feeling sick - I no longer used them in the '90s but without any concious decision being made.
More recently we used to go out "to the country" as a group and one member was prone to feeling sick, but was ok when we put her in the front passenger seat.
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