More Cars, Shorter Days: Fall Driving in North Austin and How to Set Your Car Up for Your Body

Autumn changes the driving around here in a few ways at once. School is back, so the morning and afternoon peaks are heavier and start earlier. The sun sets progressively closer to the evening commute, so more of that driving happens in low, glaring light or full dark. Football and holiday traffic build through the season. And the first genuinely wet mornings arrive after months of dry road.

More cars, more hours, worse visibility. It is a predictable combination, and it is worth spending a few minutes on the parts you control.

The Fifteen Second Check Nobody Does

That padded thing behind your head is a head restraint. It is a safety device, not a pillow, and the majority of drivers we ask have it set too low.

In a rear impact, your seat drives your torso forward while your head stays put for a moment. The restraint is what limits how far your head travels backward before something catches it. Set low, it can act closer to a pivot than a stop.

Do this in your driveway, right now if the car is nearby:

• Height. The top of the restraint should be at least level with the top of your ears. Level with the top of your head is better.
• Distance. As close to the back of your head as you can comfortably stand. A large gap means more travel before it does anything.
• Every seat, not just yours. Passenger seats and the back row get left at whatever height the last person used. Teenagers in particular tend to have theirs low because it looks better.

It is genuinely fifteen seconds a seat, and it is the highest value thing in this article.

The Rest of the Seat

Worth a couple of minutes while you are in there.

Backrest angle. Very reclined driving looks relaxed and leaves your head a long way from the restraint. Something close to upright, with a small lean, keeps your back supported and your head where the restraint can do its job.

Lower back support. If the seat leaves a gap behind your lower back, your pelvis rolls back and you settle into a slouch for the whole drive. Use the built-in lumbar adjustment if the car has one. A small rolled towel works if it does not.

Distance from the wheel. Close enough that your elbows stay bent and your shoulders stay against the seat. Reaching for the wheel with straight arms pulls the shoulders forward and the head with them.

Your wallet. If you sit on a thick wallet or a phone in a back pocket, you are sitting with one side of your pelvis higher than the other for the entire commute. Take it out. People are often surprised how much this one matters on a long drive.

Mirror trick. Set your mirrors properly while sitting tall at the start of a drive. Later, when the mirrors seem wrong, that is not the mirrors moving. It is you slumping, and it makes a useful posture alarm.

Long Drives and the Stiffness That Follows

Sitting still is the problem, more than sitting itself. On anything over an hour:

• Stop and move roughly every hour if you can. Two minutes of walking is enough to interrupt the pattern.
• At lights and in stopped traffic, roll the shoulders back a few times and gently tuck the chin, drawing the head back over the shoulders rather than jutting it toward the windshield.
• Keep the water within reach so you actually drink it, which has the secondary benefit of forcing the stops.
• Adjust the seat slightly partway through a long drive. Changing the position at all beats holding one perfectly.

The Visibility Part

Not our specialty, but it is the actual seasonal risk and it is cheap to address.

Glare in the low evening sun is worse through a dirty or hazed windshield, so clean the inside of the glass, which is the side people skip. Replace wipers that have been baking through an Austin summer before the first proper rain rather than during it. Check that your headlights both work and that the lenses have not yellowed into uselessness. And leave more following distance in the dark and the wet than the summer habit you have built up.

If Something Does Happen

Two things worth knowing in advance, because nobody thinks clearly in the moment.

How you feel at the scene predicts very little. Adrenaline masks a lot for the first few hours, and soft tissue irritation develops over a day or two. Feeling fine that evening and stiff on the second morning is the typical pattern rather than a strange one.

Some things are an emergency the same day. Any loss of consciousness or gap in memory, a severe or worsening headache, repeated vomiting, confusion, changes in vision or speech, or weakness or numbness in an arm or leg. That is an emergency department, not a chiropractor.

For neck and back stiffness that shows up in the days after, getting examined early is a reasonable step. We look at how the neck and back are actually moving, what is restricted, and whether the pattern fits what you describe. If it belongs with a different kind of doctor, we will say so. If it is something care after a collision can help with, we will explain what we found before anything is decided.

The Short Version

Raise your head restraint. Get your wallet out of your back pocket. Clean the inside of the windshield. Then drive like everyone else is also squinting into the sun, because in October around here, they are.

We are on Wells Branch Parkway in North Austin. Call (512) 255-1777 or book online. Rosamaria on our team speaks Spanish.

General wellness information, not medical advice. For an individual diagnosis, see a provider.