The survey of ergonomic cushion effect on RULA Score indices in drivers

Driving is one of the occupations that afflict a person to get the Musculoskeletal disorders because of the awkward working postures and imposition of stretch and strain in the driver’s body musculoskeletal system. We used the cushion for correcting driver’s body posture and their body conditions. Our goal in this study was the survey of cushion usefulness to posture correcting. 95 persons of bus drivers for this descriptive, analytic, interactive and cohort study were selected. In this research driver's postures while driving were assessed with RULA method (Rapid Upper Limb Assessment) in two stages, before and after the cushion usage. Then the data were analyzed by Spearman, Wilcoxon and Paired Sample tests with the aid of SPSS software program. The statistic tests results show that RULA Grand Score for these drivers is between 2-6. Wilcoxon test results for comparing of RULA indices before and after using the cushion show that using this cushion decrease neck score (P<0.001), trunk score (P<0.001) and Grand Score (P<0.001). This cushion affects correcting drivers posture but this correction isn’t so idealistic. Therefore our recommendation to designers is that further study and redesign of cushion is necessary to cushion optimizeation.