Ergonomic analysis of a traditional vehicle plying in rural and semi-urban areas in western India.

Chakdos in Western Indian state of Gujarat are makeshift vehicles for public transport. Such a vehicle was selected for ergonomic analysis. The objective of this study was to evaluate the design of the existing vehicle from an ergonomic viewpoint and to redesign it from an ergonomic perspective. Twelve different trips were made for the entire stretch of a journey of 12 kilometers on different vehicles. In general, the access to the vehicle was a severe problem for females, children and elderly people. The median and interquartile ranges for design and related issues and postural discomfort scores were calculated for the male and female passengers separately. The seating area was uncom- fortable for the males, and for the females the median score for its design was at 4.0 indicating a gross mismatch between the seat design and the passengers. The females felt that the presence of a vertical grab rail would be very helpful, and this design factor had a high median score of 5.0 indicating its absolute necessity in the vehicle. Postural discomfort scores were measured on an 8-point scale ranging from 0 to 7, where 0 indicated "no discomfort" and 7 indicated "extreme discomfort". The male passengers had the highest median discomfort on the left side of the buttocks at 6.5 and for the females for the same zone it was at 7.0 indicating again a high degree of mismatch between the body parts and the vehicle design. In the proposed design, an attempt has been made to make the vehicle more user-friendly by proposing a new type of seating system and improving the access to the vehicle based on cognitive and physical ergonomics issues of the users.