Describing the Truck Driver Eye and Head Accommodation Tools

Truck driver eye and head position tools have been developed to describe where certain percentages of truck drivers position there eyes and heads in various workspace arrangements. Separate equations describe the accommodation level for driver populations with male to female ratios of 50/50, 75/25, and a range from 90/10 to 95/5. These equations can be used as a design tool to locate the curves in vehicle space to describe the region behind which the given populations eyes and heads would be located. Equations and curves are provided for both the drivers eye and head in the side view.

It has become increasingly apparent that there is a need for improved methods of accommodating truck drivers in heavy truck cab design. Currently, practices used in the automobile industry for passenger car design are utilized for the design of heavy trucks. These practices. SAE J941e and SAE J1052, provide accommodation tools for eye and head based on the normal U.S. automobile driving population with a 50/50 male to female ratio. Utilizing the new eye and head accommodation tools developed here, proper dimensioning of these areas can be achieved for heavy truck design. A study was performed to develop new accommodation tools that would more accurately define the locations of body landmarks of heavy-truck drivers in the work space. Two reasons stand out for undertaking this study. First, it is generally believed that the truck driving population is larger in various anthropometric categories than the automobile driving population (1). Second, the truck driving population was found to have less than 5 percent female members compared to the 50 percent female members in the automobile driving population as mentioned previously. Data were gathered to develop accommodation tools for driver eye and head. This paper will describe the procedures used to develop design tools for these areas of driver accommodation in heavy truck design.