An Evaluation of Prolonged Simulated Driving Combined with In-vehicle Police Work

INTRODUCTION There is an increased prevalence of back pain associated with professional drivers [1]. It has been shown that up to 50 percent or 6 hours of an urban police officer’s shift is spent seated in a vehicle and on average 40 percent of in vehicle time involves data entry or retrieval activities with the mobile data terminal (MDT) [2]. The purpose of this investigation was to quantify postural changes in response to prolonged simulated driving, prolonged driving with an intermittent typing task and prolonged in-vehicle typing.