So, what can we do to reduce our risk of feeling awful now – before driverless cars take over?

Don’t look at your phone

The first thing is to is to avoid looking at your phone or magazine while travelling in the back.

Go for bigger vehicles

If you are struggling with regular cars, perhaps take fewer minicab rides and spend more on black cabs. After all, who gets motion sickness on the top deck of a bus?

Sit in the front

If you’re travelling a long way, fight to sit in the front passenger seat. In other words, all those things we did as kids to avoid a mid-motorway chunder still apply.

Try anti-motion sickness medication

Professor Golding appeared on BBC’s podcast Sliced Bread last year to discuss the efficacy of anti-motion sickness drugs. He explained that the research into the most common over-the-counter options had found the drugs to be “highly efficient” at curbing sickness with the only real difference being the time it takes for effects to kick in. He warned, however, that these medications don’t cure motion sickness; they only help to prevent it. For it to work, you have to absorb the tablet, but one under-reported symptom of travel nausea is something called ‘gastric stasis’, which means your stomach no longer moves its content into the gut. So you might have swallowed a pill, but it’s going nowhere. So when you take the medication is vital to reaping the benefits.

Keep feeling sick during car rides? A motion sickness expert explains why more of us are feeling queasy these days