Would There Be Motion Sickness in a Self-Driving Car?

By Park Chae-young, Yedang Elementary School

These days, science technologies are developing rapidly. They make our lives easier, more comfortable, and more convenient. Inventions such as futuristic transportation can help people go fast in a safe and sometimes eco-friendly way. A self–driving car is one of the new and unique transportation that we will be able to use in the future.

A self–driving car is a vehicle that can drive itself. It uses sensors, network big data, deep learning, and other technologies in order to drive by itself. An autonomous car is still at a developing stage, but we can meet fully automated self–driving car soon.

If we ride a fully–developed autonomous car, nobody will need to drive! Every passenger will be free to do anything in the vehicle. We can do what we want in the car such as listening to music, reading a book, playing cellphone games, and even eating hamburgers.

However, in spite of all the advantages of the self-driving car, there might be some problems, too. One of the negative effects will be motion sickness. Motion sickness is the sickness we feel when we ride something, such as a car or a ship. It happens because our vestibular organs in our ears sense that we are moving, but our eyes don’t see that we are moving. Our brains get confused because of the confusion of the messages our ears send with those our eyes send.

I think motion sickness can also occur in a self–driving car. It might happen more often while riding an autonomous car because if we don’t have to drive by ourselves, we will focus on only one thing: We will not look out at the window because we don’t have to look at traffic lights. We will just read a book or play a cellphone game. If we focus on small objects such as books or cellphones in a car, our brains will get more confused.

In conclusion, I think motion sickness can happen in a self–driving car, so we need to figure out how to relieve motion sickness in order to make a ride in an autonomous car more pleasant.