The effect of driving a car on the spine. How to take care of a healthy back?

It works all the time - thanks to it, we can walk, run, sit, bend over, jump and do a lot of other actions that we don’t even think about. Usually we remember how important it is only when it starts to hurt. A healthy spine is extremely important in a person's daily life. How to take care of it - including while driving - shows Opel.

The average modern person drives a car 15 kilometers a year. According to studies, every year we spend about 300 hours in the car, 39 of them in traffic jams. This means that, on average, we spend about 90 minutes in the car during the day.

– A sedentary lifestyle affects our attitude and makes us exercise less. Pain develops over time. 68% of Poles aged 30 to 65 regularly experience occasional back pain, and 16% have experienced back pain at least once, which shows that most people do experience this problem. In addition, driving a car, in which we spend more and more time, says Wojciech Osos, director of public relations at Opel.

We have repeatedly seen that driving a car in the long run can be exhausting for us - incl. just because of back pain. However, few people are aware of the main mistakes that they make at the very beginning of their journey. These include incorrectly adjusting the driver's seat settings or even completely ignoring this obligation.

How to properly position the driver's seat?

First of all, we need to set the seat at the correct distance from the pedals - this is the so-called longitudinal alignment. When the clutch (or brake) pedal is fully depressed, our leg cannot be completely straight. Instead, it should be slightly bent at the knee joint. The phrase “slightly” does not mean bending the leg at an angle of 90 degrees - too little distance from the pedals not only strains our joints and causes discomfort, but can also have disastrous consequences in the event of a collision. 

Another point is the adjustment of the angle of the seat back. An upright seat, like a recumbent one, should be avoided. In the correct position, with a straight arm, you should be able to rest your wrist on top of the steering wheel and also make sure the paddles don't come off the seatback. In this way, we guarantee ourselves a full range of steering movement, which is extremely important in emergency situations on the road that require fast and complex maneuvers.

The editors recommend: SDA. Lane change priority

The third step is headrest adjustment. It should be at the top or slightly higher. Thanks to this, at the moment of impact, we will avoid jerking the head back and avoid damage or even fracture of the cervical vertebrae. After all, it's time to adjust the height of the seat belts, which many of us often forget about. A properly placed belt rests on our hips and collarbones - no higher, no lower.

AGR seats

Nowadays, the technology installed in chairs is becoming more and more advanced, which means that we have more and more conveniences and new possibilities for adapting the seat to our needs. Very popular and appreciated ergonomic seats have adjustable thigh pads, lumbar support, contoured sidewalls, ventilation and heating systems and even massagers. All this allows you to take care of your back, especially during many hours of routes.

– The position in the car is static. We have to stay focused and we can't afford to make sudden movements or move around the car while driving. Therefore, this should be done for us by the chair. Correcting the shape is quite difficult, because each of us has a different anatomy. Only in Europe, the height of men varies from country to country, and the difference is up to 5 cm. There are also differences in the structure of our silhouettes. The chair has to adapt to all this. We are all different, we have different postures, sizes and problems, explains Wojciech Osos.

In the case of Opel, ergonomic seats are offered for almost all of the manufacturer's new models, such as the Astra, Zafira and X-family cars. They are designed to provide maximum driving comfort and relieve the spine. all passengers. Their development was guided by the recommendations of the German independent association of doctors and physiotherapists AGR (Aktion Gesunder Rücker), which specializes in caring for a healthy spine.

Minimum requirements must be met to obtain AGR certification. This includes:

• durable, stable chair construction made of high-strength steel;
• guarantee of a sufficient range of adjustment of the height of the backrest and headrest;
• side break, 4-way adjustable lumbar support;
• seat height adjustment;
• hip support adjustment.

See also: Suzuki Swift in our test

Opel offers the most advanced AGR certified ergonomic seat for the Insignia GSi. This is a sports version of the seat with 18-way adjustment, heating and ventilation along the entire length, massage function.

– Of course, we meet these requirements, but in many cases we exceed them. We are delighted that Opel received its first AGR certification 15 years ago for the Signum. Since then, we have been intensively implementing more and more new solutions. We can order modular chairs, i.e. Depending on the model, we can choose individual functions. They have the scope of manual or fully electronic control, but they are all AGR compliant,” adds Wojciech Osos.

Ergonomic seats are also available in the standard, better equipped versions of some models - this is the case, for example, in the already mentioned Insignia GSi, or in the Astra in the Dynamic version.