July 9, 2008 - The importance of seating.
I borrowed a coworker's Miata this week while he was using my pickup, and discovered something important. His car is fitted with a race seat of a major brand - I think it's a Sparco.
It's a terrible seat for me. It's snug around my ribs (I have a much wider build than he does) so I can feel the seat press in whenever I take a deep breath. It's fairly high in the car because it's on a slider. But most importantly, it put pressure on my right leg in such a way that I'd get cramps in about an hour of driving it.
But he's quite happy with it and has driven the car to Salt Lake City and back. That's about 300 miles each way. Obviously it fits him just fine. Another coworker also used to have this seat in his car and took it on road trips. So it's a matter of my particular physiology battling with the design of this seat, and that's a hard thing to anticipate without the chance to try a seat out. There's an important lesson here - treat race seats like shoes, and try them on if possible!
I approached Corbeau as a sponsor because I was happy with how their seats fit me, and the experience this week underlined how important that is.
tags: ergonomics |
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