With school ending and vacations starting, this is the time to pile the family in the car, visit the relatives, or just chill at the lake. But a long car trip often results in aches and pains that stick around long after the car is in park. At Ford, we feel your pain.That’s why Ford developed the industry-first, Multi-Contour Seat with Active Motion™. Mike Kolich, Ford’s seating comfort engineer, a.k.a. doctor of derrieres, offers a variety of tips to keep occupants sitting pretty no matter how long the trip.
DETAILS:
Making adjustments
Even a small change can make a big difference, including:
* Press your foot firmly to the floor behind the brake. Adjust the seat so your knee is slightly bent
* Your left foot should rest comfortably on the “dead pedal” placed on the left in cars with automatic transmissions. For manual transmission cars (stick shifts), drivers should be able to depress the clutch without pointing their toes and with minimal hip rotation. The left leg should be slightly bent when the clutch is fully depressed
* The small of the back should be pressed firmly to the back of the seat
* Position the upper body so the side wings of the seat provide as much support as possible
* Raise the seat as high off the floor as feels comfortable
* While maintaining proper vision and reach, recline a little bit. This reduces fatigue.
For measurement, your elbows should be slightly bent with your wrists on the top of the steering wheel (understanding that Ford safety experts recommend driving with hands at the 9 and 3 o’clock positions for the best steering control to avoid an accident)
* Try turning the wheel a full 180 degrees. If either hand falls off the wheel, you’re too far away. If you elbow yourself, you’re too close
* Once you’re comfortable, make sure your seatbelt rides around your hips so it pulls you down in event of a crash
Ford’s industry-first, Multi-Contour Seat with Active Motion™
This innovative seat, which debuts on the 2010 Ford Taurus, is specifically designed to make long drives far less fatiguing.
* A total of seven bladders in each individual first-row seat provide six-way lumbar support, lumbar massage with a gently rolling pattern, and “active motion” of the seat cushion
* The active motion leads to a small but continuous movement in the pelvis, and provokes a change of muscular activation to help avoid back fatigue
* The active motion of the lower cushion was developed in conjunction with Ford’s European Research Centre in Aachen, Germany, with input from back pain and fatigue specialists from the medical community
QUOTES:
“Sitting correctly in the seat can make a huge difference over the long haul. Even a small change can make a big difference.”
– Mike Kolich,
Seat Systems Engineer / Product Development Center
Press release via Ford
Eh, been there done that. BMW has had active seats since the late 90′s… It’s an option on my car that massages your pelvis to keep you alert and less fatigued. Nice option to add to an every day car though.