Author: Ashish Tiwari
Date Published: 5 May 2021
Publisher: ScienceABC
Link: https://www.scienceabc.com/humans/travel-fatigue-why-does-traveling-tire-you-out.html
Your brain keeps your muscles engaged to account for small movements of the vehicle to ensure that your posture is properly maintained. These small movements cause your muscles to constantly work, which makes them tired over a long journey.
Note: This experience is subjective, and it isn’t universal. Some people aren’t bothered by long-distance road travel. In this article, we discuss only a few factors that largely contribute to making you feel tired after a long journey in a car, bus, or aeroplane.
Factors that impact passenger comfort on the road
Travelling on the road is not as easy as sitting in a chair. While on the journey, the moving vehicle changes speed due to traffic, causing you to jerk back and forth while winding roads will make sway along with the vehicle turns. If the vehicle is old, with uneven seats and a rusty, vibrating engine, or the roads dented with potholes, the ride is anything but stationary.
All these factors – the roads, the vehicle and the traffic – have a cumulative effect on how comfortable your journey is.
These sways and jerks and jumps take their toll on the body, even though we are not aware of it. The brain accounts for movement and engages the muscles to ensure that your posture remains upright. This constant rally between the two organs – which can last more than 2-3 hours – is energetically costly. In fact, this is why standing hurts your legs more than walking. Trains are comparatively less tiring simply because they do not accelerate/decelerate and change direction as frequently as automobiles on the road.
Fatigue-causing factors in a flight
Flights are no better than road vehicles when it comes to causing fatigue. Noise, shuddering, rolling, turbulence and other vibrations experienced during a flight are not natural movements of the human body. The body is constantly trying to stabilize itself, making you feel tired after a long flight.
The psychological factor
One cannot ignore the psychological aspect of long-distance travel. Already, the very concept of travel exhausts many people.
When you’re on a flight, you’re probably a little aware of yourself and your surroundings; there are strangers around you, and you’re unconsciously trying to stay out of their personal space. In other words, you’re constantly on “alert” or worried, which is not (most) people’s natural state of mind. This adds to the mental exhaustion of travelling for hours on a flight.
That’s why the business class is so popular on flights: you get more space up there, and it’s much more comfortable. The purpose of business class is to make you feel at home, so you’re rested and ready to work as soon as you get off the plane.
Conclusion
However, the feeling of fatigue is very subjective and varies from person to person. For those who DO get tired on long road trips or flights, these are some of the key factors contributing to their fatigue.
This article, though mentioned that many of the topics discussed were of a subjective nature, lets us see some of the common issues that may contribute to a negative user experience while in a car on a long trip, primarily with the relationship of travel, and exhaustion. One thing to note I thought to be rather important was the mention of comfortability or lack thereof caused by the smoothness of the ride. Another interesting comparison I saw here was to the business section of an airplane, and how its design and implied activities left guests with a more restful experience. I think it’s important that we account for this as we continue to rethink the backseat experience and how we can accommodate to negative physical sensations while in a moving vehicle.
Tiwari, A. (2021, May 5). Why is travelling in a bus more tiring than in a train? Science ABC. Retrieved September 23, 2021, from https://www.scienceabc.com/humans/travel-fatigue-why-does-traveling-tire-you-out.html.
