Seating position - a different perspective
Discussion
There have been a lot of threads on here lately about seating position so I thought I’d pour fuel on the fire by offering a slightly different perspective!
Most car interiors these days are designed to a very tight package and the constraints and ergonomic data are broadly similar for all manufactures, the more specialist cars may differ but the principles will be the same. Having been involved in the design of many car interiors and reading these threads here, I came up with my system for establishing the correct seating position. Sorry if any of this comes over as teaching granny to suck eggs but its best to be thorough.
Ok, we’ll assume that we are getting into a mainstream fairly modern production car for the first time with fully adjustable seats.
1) Push the clutch pedal all the way in and adjust the seat fore and aft until your knee is just bent, but not locked straight
2) With the pedal still in or at least with you leg in the same position, adjust the tilt of the base until your leg is evenly supported along its length, you may need to make some small adjustments to the fore and aft to get this right.
3) Now adjust the backrest, stretch out your left arm and fingers until you can touch the top of the centre stack with tips of your fingers and adjust the seat so you do not lift your shoulder off the seat back. A lot of cars have the hazard switch positioned here, normally just under the centre vents so this makes a handy target
4) Now I’ll adjust the height of the seat. As a rough guide your eye level should be about two thirds of the way up the windscreen if you sit normally and look straight ahead. I’m too tall for most cars so tend to set it as low as it will go and adjust slightly from there if needed.
5) Now go back to step 1 and go through to step 4 again to fine tune. For example, you may find having adjusted the height that the angle of the seat base is a bit out.
6) Now you can adjust the wheel, assuming it has adjustment for both reach and tilt, move it so that you can see all of the instruments clearly and they are close to evenly framed by the rim, adjust the reach so that you wrist is on the rim without your shoulder lifting from the seat back.
7) Fine tune as necessary. It should only require small movements to make sure you can reach everything and are comfortable
You should now be sitting comfortably! Obviously this cant work on all cars for all people, but the principle should. The important bit is to adjust from fixed hard points. Normally the clutch pedal, the centre stack and the windscreen. This should give you fairly common reference points in all cars so you can jump in just about anything and find the right driving position.
It comes from the way car interiors are designed around standard ergonomic and vision angle data, we have these fairly fixed by engineering and design the interior around them, when you get in a new car you have to “reverse engineer” this process to find the right position.
Dons flame proof suit and makes off in the direction of the exit whistling nonchalantly……
Most car interiors these days are designed to a very tight package and the constraints and ergonomic data are broadly similar for all manufactures, the more specialist cars may differ but the principles will be the same. Having been involved in the design of many car interiors and reading these threads here, I came up with my system for establishing the correct seating position. Sorry if any of this comes over as teaching granny to suck eggs but its best to be thorough.
Ok, we’ll assume that we are getting into a mainstream fairly modern production car for the first time with fully adjustable seats.
1) Push the clutch pedal all the way in and adjust the seat fore and aft until your knee is just bent, but not locked straight
2) With the pedal still in or at least with you leg in the same position, adjust the tilt of the base until your leg is evenly supported along its length, you may need to make some small adjustments to the fore and aft to get this right.
3) Now adjust the backrest, stretch out your left arm and fingers until you can touch the top of the centre stack with tips of your fingers and adjust the seat so you do not lift your shoulder off the seat back. A lot of cars have the hazard switch positioned here, normally just under the centre vents so this makes a handy target
4) Now I’ll adjust the height of the seat. As a rough guide your eye level should be about two thirds of the way up the windscreen if you sit normally and look straight ahead. I’m too tall for most cars so tend to set it as low as it will go and adjust slightly from there if needed.
5) Now go back to step 1 and go through to step 4 again to fine tune. For example, you may find having adjusted the height that the angle of the seat base is a bit out.
6) Now you can adjust the wheel, assuming it has adjustment for both reach and tilt, move it so that you can see all of the instruments clearly and they are close to evenly framed by the rim, adjust the reach so that you wrist is on the rim without your shoulder lifting from the seat back.
7) Fine tune as necessary. It should only require small movements to make sure you can reach everything and are comfortable
You should now be sitting comfortably! Obviously this cant work on all cars for all people, but the principle should. The important bit is to adjust from fixed hard points. Normally the clutch pedal, the centre stack and the windscreen. This should give you fairly common reference points in all cars so you can jump in just about anything and find the right driving position.
It comes from the way car interiors are designed around standard ergonomic and vision angle data, we have these fairly fixed by engineering and design the interior around them, when you get in a new car you have to “reverse engineer” this process to find the right position.
Dons flame proof suit and makes off in the direction of the exit whistling nonchalantly……
Edited by prelude4ws on Thursday 27th July 10:53
edit: grr dodgy internet conection means I posted fresh air! If a kindly mod can add a subject that would be cool as well.
edit: grr dodgy internet conection means I posted fresh air! If a kindly mod can add a subject that would be cool as well.
Edited by prelude4ws on Thursday 27th July 11:03
Looks like a pretty sound method to me.
Could you comment on one of my gripes about many cars, which is that they either:
- do not offer any form of squab angle adjustment to facilitate supporting the whole of the leg above the knee, and
- in some of those with height adjustment but no squab angle adjustment, raising the seat tips the squab forwards.
...or is it just money...?
Could you comment on one of my gripes about many cars, which is that they either:
- do not offer any form of squab angle adjustment to facilitate supporting the whole of the leg above the knee, and
- in some of those with height adjustment but no squab angle adjustment, raising the seat tips the squab forwards.
...or is it just money...?
Solos said:
Not forgetting to adjust the head restraint to a position that reduces injury in the event of a collision.
opps! yeah That too, I often forget that as we have had Volvos for the last 2 years and they have fixed headrests. Volvos reason being its safer to have fixed ones than adjustable ones in the wrong position.
I used to be the same but recently I've had a number of rental cars where putting the seat all the way down left your legs in a slightly odd angle, but to be fair, I did only put the seat up maybe one or two clicks!
We picked up our new S-Max last weekend and having driven it around all week end I raised the seat a touch as well.
We picked up our new S-Max last weekend and having driven it around all week end I raised the seat a touch as well.
Zod said:
All sounds sensible to me, except that I start with seat height, i.e. get it as low as it will go. I've never yet found a car in which I don't want the seat at its lowest and I'm not that tall at 6'2".
Try the current shape BMW 5 series. I'm 6'4" and with the seat at the lowest position, I could only see sky! Porsche 997 are pretty good as well.
leosayer said:
Zod said:
All sounds sensible to me, except that I start with seat height, i.e. get it as low as it will go. I've never yet found a car in which I don't want the seat at its lowest and I'm not that tall at 6'2".
Try the current shape BMW 5 series. I'm 6'4" and with the seat at the lowest position, I could only see sky! Porsche 997 are pretty good as well.
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