Published by The Wall Street Journal: Do You Suffer From Motion Sickness in a Car? Help May Be on the Way

Makers of self-driving cars have focused on ways to keep passengers safe. But how do

you keep them from getting sick?

Roughly 1 in 3 adults and half of all children are considered highly susceptible to

motion sickness, which can be triggered by all sorts of things, such as riding

backward and sniffing certain smells. What’s more, passengers are much more likely

to get it than drivers. In large part, that is because they don’t have control of the car,

so they can’t anticipate all the moves it will make and adjust their bodies accordingly.

Their senses tell their body to expect one thing, but the car does another.

That is a problem for the autonomous-car business—because everyone is a passenger,

and nobody continuously controls the car. What’s more, one of the big promises ofautonomous vehicles is that you can use your travel time to work, read or take in a

movie. Those are precisely the things that can make motion sickness worse.

To keep motion sickness from becoming an obstacle to a self-driving-car future,

companies and researchers are working on ways to make rides smoother and less

triggering for passengers. They are trying everything from minimizing erratic driving

behavior during the ride to changing the interior design of the cabin to make it as

stomach-friendly as possible...

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