A GOOD SEAT AND STILL BACK PAIN…
In recent years, the lorry industry has made drastic improvements to drivers’ seats in the form of air suspension and adjustment facilities. In that respect, today’s drivers are certainly well looked after. Be that as it may, the problem of back pain refuses to go away…
On average, Dutch drivers take slightly more than 19 days off due to illness every year. That is quite a lot. It results in almost 1.8 million days lost. Employers in the transport sector would have to take on an extra force of about 700 drivers to make sure goods get from A to B on time. In practice, this is only partly the case. More often than not, a fellow driver is forced to make an extra run. Although this spreads the problems of stress and fatigue evenly among the drivers, they still remain, as does the risk of back troubles. Therefore, the employer can benefit immensely from a systematic fall in absenteeism due to illness in the company.
In recent years, the government has studied this subject closely and a whole host of measures has been handed down to the industry. These rules and regulations have a definite preventive effect: employers who lose an employee under the Work and Income According to Labour Capacity Act (WIA) have to pay up …!
Legislation governing health and safety at work has also been tightened up and now sets strict requirements for drivers’ seats. However, these are still only expressed in adjustment standards. If a seat can be adjusted in enough places and as accurately as possible, every driver will fit into it comfortably. In theory, that is quite correct, but with all the adjustment facilities on a modern seat, there is more of a risk of the driver failing to adjust it properly. Assuming the best possible posture, the driver is sitting correctly but has to keep still for too long. Indeed, the better the posture, the less the driver moves in the seat. The pressure on the spinal column is still excessive.
That is why over half of the drivers suffer from back pain. Hours on end spent in more or less the same position behind the wheel is not healthy. The sedentary life of the lorry driver is actually extreme, because driving and resting times mean that drivers are the only employees in the Netherlands who actually spend four and a half hours in a seat without interruption. Nobody can keep that up in an office. It is more than half a working day! A lot of drivers claim that they never sit still for that long because they have to ‘run themselves ragged delivering to forty addresses a day’. ‘We’re top athletes’, they add. Unfortunately, the figures issued by the BGZ organisation for health and safety at work in the transport sector show that among this group of drivers, over 65% has back problems! Furthermore, even if they only drive 300 kilometres a day, drivers are still behind the wheel for more than 4.5 hours.
The only solution is to move more behind the wheel to keep the spinal column and the discs in good condition. And that is exactly what the P-Elvis is designed to do. It is the first active seating element in an otherwise perfect yet passive drivers’ seat.
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40 PER CENT FEWER BACK PROBLEMS FOR DRIVERS
SAVAS INTRODUCES THE P-ELVIS
Drivers’ seat specialist SAVAS Seating of Zaltbommel, the Netherlands, is set to introduce the P-Elvis, a new technology in the fight against lower back problems among drivers. The company expects this new technology to cut sick leave caused by back pain by 40 per cent. Health and safety at work organisation BGZ Wegvervoer is enthusiastic about the innovation.
The P-Elvis is a simple mechanism built into the driver’s seat, which enables the seat to move to the left and right at a deflection of 0.8 degrees at a frequency of 4 times a minute. The clinical processes caused by this movement are extremely complex. In brief, the P-Elvis puts the intervertebral discs in the backbone into micro-motion, improving the circulation and thus keeping the backbone supple. In medical science, this principle is known as RCPM, or Rotary Continuous Passive Motion. Research has shown that the slight rotating movement described above prevents and combats lower back pain, a complaint suffered either regularly or constantly by 55 per cent of all lorry drivers, with all the implications this entails.
The latest figures issued by BGZ for 2004 are clear evidence of the problem. In that year, the organisation for health and safety at work registered no fewer than 1,771,595 man days of sick leave among 91,863 employees in 4,238 companies. A little under half of the cases (45 per cent) had trouble with the locomotor apparatus, while 55 per cent of the drivers indicated that they suffered from lower back pain. As a result, sick leave in the transport sector is two to three times higher than average.
Via organisations like the health and safety at work services, SAVAS Seating has been improving seats for drivers with back complaints for years, and has an unparalleled knowledge of the problem. This is why the company showed such an interest in the RCPM technology, recognising it as an opportunity to help its customers even more. The practical conversion of the RCPM technology into a product that can be used in the transport sector took place in Zaltbommel, in association with ErgoDynamics. The finished system is designed in such a way that, apart from the SAVAS seat programme, it can be built into almost any kind of existing lorry seat. This means that it is unnecessary to install a totally new, modified seat, which makes it a cost-efficient product. The official launch is scheduled at the next IAA in Hannover in September.
In the meantime, the people at BGZ are enthusiastic about the P-Elvis. In a letter of intent, the health and safety at work organisation has indicated that it regards the installation of the P-Elvis as an effective means to cut levels of sick leave among drivers. Initial results are extremely promising: people with lower back problems notice a clear reduction in the pain after only an hour. However, the primary objective of the P-Elvis is to prevent back problems. It is the first really active seating element that enables the industry to improve a driver’s seat still further, in addition to the host of passive measures regarding the correct sitting posture and support.
While the health and safety at work people have been propagating active sitting in an office environment for some time, until now it was considered impossible in the automotive industry for safety reasons. In this regard, the P‑Elvis is a major breakthrough. The P-Elvis is now recognised as an innovative project by the Ministry of Social Affairs as part of the scheme called Prevention of Absenteeism due to Illness. SAVAS believes it can cut the number of drivers with back problems by 40 per cent.
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IN THE NAME OF 'THE KING'
SAVAS Seating purposely called its newest acquisition in the fight against back pain among drivers the P-ELVIS. The official name is actually Torsio, but the people in Zaltbommel thought that sounded too medical. Since you sit on top of it and it keeps your pelvis and back turning (albeit only slightly), they called it the P-ELVIS, a tongue in cheek reference to The King. So that drivers are fit enough to rock ‘n roll for an hour or two after work!
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