Car sickness explained and how to avoid it in EVs and ride shares

Feeling queasy in the back seat of the car? Breaking out in a cold sweat on a winding road? You’re not alone. Around 25-30 per cent of us who travel by car, bus, plane, or boat will experience motion sickness, also known as travel or car sickness.

Head of School and Dean of Pharmacy at the Sydney Pharmacy School, Professor Andrew McLachlan, says the common condition can affect people across a wide range of contexts, from riding amusement park rides to using virtual reality (VR).

“Some people are extremely susceptible to motion sickness and may feel unwell even with minor movements such as head bobbing while snorkelling or even riding a camel,” he tells carsales.

Believed to be caused by a temporary dysfunction in our brain’s balance centres, “the perception of motion of any sort can bring on symptoms of travel sickness”, says McLachlan, including dizziness, nausea, vomiting, excessive salivation, rapid breathing, and cold sweats.

The risk of car sickness can be increased by factors such as where a person is seated in the car – with the back seat being the worst – what they’re doing while the car is moving (reading can be a trigger), and how the car is being driven (jerky driving or quick acceleration and braking).

All these factors mean that being a passenger in a taxi or a ride share can increase the likelihood of experiencing car sickness, explains McLachlan.

“People sitting in the back of the rideshare car so they can’t see the road or traffic and anticipate stopping or accelerating, often looking at your phone (head down), add on some ‘rideshare’ driving to get to the next job – it is a recipe for motion sickness,” he says.

EVs can also increase the likelihood of car sickness, with various studies pointing to a sensory mismatch that can occur while driving or being driven in one.

Because EVs accelerate instantly and use regenerative braking in total silence, this means your brain receives confusing signals because it cannot subconsciously anticipate the vehicle’s speed changes as it would in a petrol-driven car,” explains McLachlan.

The good news is that in EVs it can be offset by “careful attention to driving”, especially when accelerating and stopping, while looking out the window rather than at your phone or sitting in the front seat can help in ride shares or taxis.

While there’s a range of over-the-counter preventative medications that many sufferers use to prevent the onset of symptoms, McLachlan says that due to “unwanted side effects such as drowsiness, it’s reasonable to try behavioural techniques first, or alongside medicines.”

And researchers in China have recently made some interesting findings while looking into car sickness that might just fit the bill.

Recruiting 30 people who had reported moderate car sickness in the past, researchers used a driving simulator to trigger car sickness. Then, once they stopped driving, they played different types of music to the participants and asked them to report how they were feeling, with some surprising results.

The scientists found that joyful music alleviated carsickness the most, reducing it by 57.3 per cent, closely followed by soft music at 56.7 per cent.

Passionate music reduced motion sickness by 48.3 per cent, while playing sad music was slightly less effective than doing nothing. The control group reported a 43.3 per cent reduction in carsickness symptoms after their rest, while those who listened to sad music reported only a 40 per cent reduction.

“Based on our conclusions, individuals experiencing motion sickness symptoms during travel can listen to cheerful or gentle music to achieve relief,” said one of the scientists, Dr Qizong Yue of Southwest University, China.

McLachlan says that it is certainly possible that music could help mitigate some of the sensory mismatch that contributes to motion sickness, “mainly by distracting a person”.

But he says the research is inconclusive due to the small study size and its focus on remedy rather than prevention, which McLachlan says is usually a better option.

Some general advice for preventing car sickness that McLachlan recommends includes spending more time in the front seat, keeping an eye on the road, and focusing on other things, such as looking out at the scenery.

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