A research group led by Professor Takahiro Yakou of the Graduate School of System Design and Management at Keio University has revealed that using fuel cell vehicles instead of diesel vehicles in garbage collection trucks may reduce the physiological burden on drivers and workers.
In logistics and waste collection, vibrations and noise generated by vehicles have been pointed out as increasing the physical burden on workers. On the other hand, while electric vehicles such as fuel cell vehicles have been evaluated from the perspective of environmental performance such as CO₂ emission reduction, their effects on reducing the burden on workers and improving the working environment have not been sufficiently verified.
Therefore, this study compared whether the physiological burden on workers differed between diesel and fuel cell vehicles in actual garbage collection operations. Heart rate variability (HRV) was measured for garbage truck drivers and passengers, and the Root Mean Square of Successive Differences (RMSSD) was used as an indicator of physiological fatigue for analysis.
As a result, when using a fuel cell vehicle, RMSSD improved by an average of approximately 60% for the driver and approximately 20% for the accompanying worker compared to a diesel vehicle, showing a significant difference. From these results, the research group considers that the low vibration and low noise characteristics of fuel cell vehicles may contribute to reducing the physiological burden on occupants.
This study is a valuable report demonstrating the impact of fuel cell vehicles on the physiological burden on workers in a real-world work environment. It is expected to provide a technical basis for simultaneously achieving improved environmental performance and working conditions in a wide range of "working mobility" applications, including not only waste collection vehicles but also logistics vehicles, public transportation, and construction machinery.
