Poor posture while driving – less safe, more exposure to back pain
Business Car Manager: Editor’s Blog
STUMBLED across this rather interesting story about trials taking place at the leasing company Arval.
The company has won several prizes in recognition of its focus on improving road and driver safety. And now Arval is trialling some seat belt technology designed to improve driver comfort among its own employees.
The company is using something called a CG-Lock – CG stands for centre of gravity by the way – which is a small palm sized device that clips onto existing seatbelts. Apparently this eliminates the slack in the lap belt, keeping the user in the safest position possible.
This is how Graham Cox from CG-Lock, explains the benefits: “As RoSPA highlights, the safest way to travel is to have no slack in the lapbelt portion of the seatbelt and have it running firmly across the hips. Without the CG-Lock this can only be achieved by repeatedly sitting upright and pulling the diagonal section of the seatbelt to remove the slack. Most people don’t do this and so the lapbelt ‘rides up’ off the hips onto the stomach.
“This is not the position at which EuroNCAP tests are performed and significantly increases risk of injury should an accident occur. The CG-Lock keeps the lapbelt exactly where it should be, firmly across the pelvis.”
It seems an amazingly simple device – yet with many advantages.
Tracey Scarr, Arval’s fleet and road safety manager told me: “Seatbelts are a really important area to look at because while there has been a lot of focus on child seats, adult restraints haven’t seen much development.”
The other benefit Tracey explained to me was those drivers who suffer from back pain. Apparently the CG-Lock might be able to help there.
“The CG-Lock has been recommended by some top healthcare professionals to reduce back pain,” Tracey added, “and has also been found to improve driver safety so we wanted to test it.”
It will be interesting to finding out how Tracey and her team think the lock performed in the trials – and how they measure the benefits.
