One of the most dreadful moments anyone can experience on the road is the feeling of your body betraying you. Your head starts feeling off, and your stomach begins churning. It may even hurt to look out of the windows. Yep, you’re sick in a car, and this is only just the beginning of a nightmare. But this sickness doesn’t always seem so straightforward. What weird ways have cars made you sick?
It took me a while to realize that getting carsick was normal for some folks. The first time I remember getting carsick was in 2006 or 2007 when I rode in the back of my family’s 2003 Oldsmobile Silhouette minivan. I was barely 13 or 14 at the time. We were driving to Chicago and I remember trying to focus on my PlayStation Portable when I was overwhelmed with dizziness and a headache. I was too young to understand what was going on, and I sort of just said nothing and sat there for the whole trip in a whirlwind of terribleness.
Then, I rode in cars for years without it ever happening again.
Things changed in 2019. I had a girlfriend at the time who fancied herself as a Speed Racer type. She blasted down the road in her Kia at speeds that, in that compact hatch, felt like Mach 1. If she did it with me in the car, I got violently ill every single time. It would get bad enough that, if I knew she was driving us somewhere, I’d take the strongest headache pills I could find before getting into the car. If I didn’t, there was a non-zero chance I’d end up hunched over on the side of the road.
I also noticed that I got sick in other cars, too. These people didn’t drive like they were an hour late for the most important event in their lives, but normally. It took me a while to figure out that in all of these instances where the driver wasn’t racing, I was looking at my phone. If I didn’t look at my phone, I didn’t get sick.
This was only reinforced when I met my wife in 2020. Now, I love my life so very much. But she readily admits that she’s not a great driver. When I met her, I noticed that she didn’t give a constant throttle, but pulses the throttle by repeatedly pushing and then letting go of the pedal. Most times she braked also felt like panic stops. Add it all up and, if I looked at my phone, boom, I got violently ill.
Weirdly, this didn’t happen when Sheryl owned her BMW E39, and I chalk that up to the BMW being so smooth that even rough driving feels a lot less chaotic. As for those years I went without getting sick? I realized that, back then, I was almost always the driver, and phones weren’t as deeply rooted in society yet.
Still, I used to feel deeply embarrassed about this. How can a car enthusiast get sick so easily when riding in a car?
I would later find out that I am not alone. There are other people like me who get sick in cars when they are not the driver. There’s even a whole phenomenon of people who apparently get sick when they’re passengers in certain EVs. Humans are weird! In a way, this Autopian Asks is really just a way for me to tell you that you are not alone.
Of course, there are a lot of ways to get sick in a car. Maybe you get tired because of the fumes from the exhaust leak you haven’t fixed. Or, maybe you feel “high” from that leaky gas tank. Or, even perhaps you somehow catch a cold when you drive.
I want to know. Are there some weird ways cars have made you sick? Is there something that you just cannot do in a car or else you’ll get sick?
Any time I see an ugly cYbErJuNkTrUcK, I look away and want to puke…
When I was five (and my brother would have been three), our parents bought a Volvo 245 through the European delivery program. They made the smart decision to pick up the car in Göteborg then drive it over the mountains to Bergen, Norway *in January*. Studded tires got us through it, but also I threw up all over the brand new car in the process lol
I don’t think I’ve ever been sick due to a vehicle other than that, although there was a memorable puking incident on a train in Germany, but that’s my fault for being massively hungover and trying to push through it.
We were coming home from a New Years’ party and my wife was driving as I was wholly incapable (because party). We were nearly home and I was definitely aware that things were going to remove themselves from my stomach very soon. But my body knew how long we had left and was capable of waiting until we got to our house.
Except my wife decided “she needed fries” and detoured to stop at McDonalds.
Thank god we have all-weather mats.
Back when we were still dating, my now wife and here friends took me on a serious bender until early in the morning. Then, after a short night sleep, my now mother in law took us on a car trip to the hills in her landrover.
It was that my stomach was empty or I would have emptied it in the backseat.
To this day, I strongly dislike riding in landrovers. Even the posh ones.
“Weirdly, this didn’t happen when Sheryl owned her BMW E39, and I chalk that up to the BMW being so smooth that even rough driving feels a lot less chaotic.”
Nope. Having been driven in that EXACT VIN E39 by The Bishop’s Father, it was ABSOLUTELY capable of making one sick in “the right hands”
Well, technically it wasn’t the car itself. You see, I was at this SAAB convention and….
I gave myself motion sickness while driving a rental Nissan Sentra with a CVT.
I’m one of the ‘lucky’ few who get carsick – while driving. Which is extremely problematic, as I do endurance racing. Normal driving (commuting) is almost always fine, but, spirited driving is very hit-or-miss. If I know I’ve got a spirited drive (or race) coming up, the regimen is
And even that isn’t foolproof. I have found that keeping cool helps a lot, but, that can be tough in a car with the windows down.
About 10 years ago I was on a business trip to San Francisco. I had a free day, so I rented a Miata and took it up the PCH, and of course I observed posted speed limits. The Miata was great on that twisty section of the PCH and I had a blast. Until I got motion sickness. I had to find somewhere to pull over and laid out on the ground for about 20 minutes until the world stopped spinning.
Reading is the ultimate car sick trigger. If I’m driving I’ll never get sick. As a passenger I can’t read, scroll my phone, or look at a roadmap too long. I can’t even look at too many billboards. Also, sadly, car video games with driver POV. I guess my body gets flummoxed by visual input with no physical sensation.
I’ve been in more than one pickup where the tossing around from just normal driving took a minor queasy feeling and made it a major queasy feeling.
The worst car I ever owned, a 71 Vega wagon. The heater core decided to go south in the summer. And when you turned on the A/C, a fog of anti-freeze appeared. Not only could we not breath, it made us totally nauseous as we tried to pull the car over in the 100 degree weather. Opened up all the doors and tried to let it air out. Then tried to get home, 45 miles away, without the A/C as it was one of the hottest days of the year. Two weeks later sold the trashcan on wheels for $150 on a cool morning.
I have never had motion sickness in a car, plane or on a boat.
But one time, nearly 15 years ago, I was driving on a familiar road that had a pair of undulations and after going up and down both, I suddenly started getting progressively dizzier. I found a safe place to pull over and as soon as I opened the door and put my foot down on terra firma, it all stopped.
I don’t whether it was vertigo, but it has not recurred in the years since.
I’m somewhat sensitive to motion sickness. Never ever when I’m driving, with one exception – my Sentra SE-R on Hwy 17 from the Bay Area to Santa Cruz, at night, one August day in 1998. That’s it. As a passenger, not bad but I have to be careful – some days and cars will be worse, and I don’t see them coming. One thing I will not do is face backwards, either in a car or on a train. I have been on a roller coaster exactly once, and will never do it again.
A Pontiac Aztec. I looked at it.
Literally the very first time I saw one I realized (a) what they were trying to do, and (b) that they had failed at it badly.
My motion sickness is very odd. Never had problems in cars or boats, but can’t do amusement park rides since becoming an adult. The big one is first person perspective games. Also shaky cam movies. The trailer for Hardcore Henry had me shutting my eyes in mere seconds. I swear my brain thought I was gonna die with that stimulus. So cars have only gotten me figuratively ill, not literally.
My wife gets carsick when on her phone for too long or if she tries to read in the car. I basically don’t, I’ll be reading or typing or whatever in the passenger seat and am basically fine. (The only time I really get “motion sick” is with certain video games, with certain graphics settings, in certain environments.)
That said, there is one time I remember getting motion sick, and it was on a school field trip to Howe Caverns. I started getting really ill, and rather than joining my class, I remember chilling with the bus driver for a while (I don’t think the *whole* time but a decent chunk of time). They were very cool and gave me a ginger ale.
Once I got home, related or not, it was apparent that I got chicken pox.
How the hell does one relate to the other? No idea. Maybe entirely coincidental – I was generally fine in the back of a school bus even after some time, though that was a longer drive to be sure. Just saying it happened.
Car sick with a reason… remember the Corvair? Sure you do! GM’s answer to get “warmed” engine heat into the cabin were two “cardboardish” ducts. There were heat shields on each exhaust manifold where the “ducts” attached, kinda! Over time, the duct would detach from the heat shield, or the duct would simply fail, resulting in a hole that would draw exhaust gases into the cabin. You know the rest of the story. Carbon monoxide, in large doses, isn’t good! I’ve owned 3 Corvairs. A 64 and (2) 66’s. Each one had this issue when I bought them. The system itself worked, but did require maintenance and inspection.
I too get carsick if I’m a passenger and look at my phone or read a book. I gradually figured this out in my early teens when we’d go on long driving holidays (which was almost every school holidays) and by the end of the day I’d feel like absolute shit – bad headache and just feeling queasy. It didn’t stop me reading my book though!
Back then it used to take a solid hour or more of car time with me reading before I started feeling ill, these days looking at my phone for five minutes is enough to start feeling it. That’s why if we’re on a long trip and I’m somehow the passenger (very rare as I love driving and my wife doesn’t), I’ll usually just try to get some sleep.
Commenting again since I remembered a better carsick story. This one happened not too long ago, back when I was in college and running track and field. We were going to a meet in Wooster, OH, about a 4 hour drive from south central Michigan. Before this ride, I had never felt seriously carsick on a bus(we took charter busses to meets), a few times I had felt slightly sick but chalked it up to early mornings and competition nerves and had always gotten over it with some music and water. Usually drivers took the interstate or state roads if possible, however this one didn’t get that memo.
Instead, he took us across the rolling hills of rural Ohio on winding country roads, driving with the style that many have already decried-full gas or full brakes. On a bouncy, boat like bus, with me and my friends sitting in the back, where the most motion was felt. Shortly after, a few of my teammates and I started playing cards to pass the time. A couple rounds in, a few rough stops later, and suddenly a wave of sick feelings rolled over me, and I said no more cards. One of the hurdlers I was playing with went to the bathroom “just in case” and the girl across from me was now almost in a ball. I drank some water and focused on the sky. Everytime I felt like I was starting to improve we would crest another hill or hit another backroad intersection, going from 65 to 0 and back to 65. Somehow we survived the harrowing Ohio backcountry (actually nice countryside if driven through reasonably) with nobody hurling to my knowledge. Upon arriving in Wooster, almost everyone said they felt carsick; word from upfront was the driver apparently was routinely hitting 70 mph and going over the double yellow lines for some of the tighter curves. Needless to say, he was asked to make the trip home 30 minutes longer and take the interstate instead of taking the backroads and driving the coach bus like a Miata
There are so many taxi drivers these days in London who drive EVs with the regen on full, and use the throttle pedal as a binary on/off switch. Full instant torque, or reasonably heavy regen braking, nothing in between.
You’d have thought that someone who makes their money driving home drunk people at 4am would want to avoid their MG5’s interior being painted with a technicolour yawn…
Someone commented in the Volt subreddit about getting sick in Volts and it was clear that their experiences were with rideshares trying to deliver people as fast as possible, not people getting used to a car as their daily driver.
I used to get car sick while reading or looking at things other than outside for long periods of time. The same thing on a boat then I got sea legs and looked out the window more and I don’t think ever got car or sea sick again. Other things finding out I’m allergic to various things after eating them at restaurants but that’s another story.
Motion sickness, whether in a car, boat or plane, is typically caused by a disconnect between what the inner ear and the eyes are seeing. When on a boat, the guidance is always to let the sick person drive or if they can’t put them at the back of the boat, facing rearwards, watching the horizon.
Cars and planes would be a similar approach. 9 out of 10 times the person will be feeling better in a bit.
Growing up I would get carsick if I was reading a book in the car or if I was hanging out below decks on a boat, unable to see outside. I got used to looking for solutions pretty early on.
I also learned that while out fishing on the ocean, eating grapes and brownies at the same time is not only not wise, but also tastes weird on the way back up.
As a child with what was probably hyperlexia and definitely with a father who liked his Salems, I learned early to avoid reading in the car as much as my craving for stimulation could stand and to ask that the menthol fumes at least be vented out through a cracked window. (I was eighteen before I discovered how delightful tobacco use could be, and that was exclusively non-mentholated, let me tell ya.) Phones have reintroduced the issue of reading and stimulation cravings, so I do my best to avoid motion sickness by only using them while I’m driving.
Once on a trip overseas I actually saw a Ssangyong Rodius in person.
Have an in-law with one. The build quality reminded me of the 1970s.