Place an Ad Calendars Classified Forums Sports Weather

sptimes.com Text-only News sections Arts & Entertainment AP The Wire Business Citrus County Columnists Floridian Hernando County Hillsborough Letters Movies Neighborhood Times News Update North Pinellas North of Tampa Obituaries Opinion Pasco County South Pinellas Sports State Tampa Bay TV Times World & Nation  Find your local news section Weekly sections Brandon Times City Times Homes Outdoors Perspective Personal Tech Taste Travel Weekend Xpress Special Sections Arena football Buccaneers College football Devil Rays Lightning Police reports Schools Seniority Subscriber Services Subscribe Renew Help Advertise Place an ad In print Online Market Info Join Us Internships Scholarships Times Jobs Contact us

Sicking seeking safety

Engineering professor invented the soft walls, and so much more.

By JOANNE KORTH, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published August 21, 2002

The man responsible for auto racing's newest safety innovation does not feel a need for speed. He never has traded paint on a Saturday night short track. He's not a racer.

But he crashes a lot of cars.

Dean Sicking is a soft-spoken professor with a classroom full of engineering majors and a research facility teeming with data about the impact angles, velocities and G-force loads of race cars crashed violently into concrete walls in the name of science -- and safety. The inventor of soft walls, Sicking, with his lab coat and computer model, is the new breed of racing safety expert.

"All safety issues in racing are being attacked scientifically now," said Sicking, the 44-year-old from the University of Nebraska whose soft walls debuted successfully this season at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, lessening the impact of several open-wheel and stock-car crashes at the storied track.

"We can do so much more with computer modeling and design than we ever could accomplish in the past. I'd be surprised if it's not the basis of any safety research from now on. I don't know what the next problem will be, but we'll be using the computer model to attack it."

The racing world was introduced to Sicking one year ago today, when NASCAR announced the results of a six-month investigation into the crash that killed seven-time Winston Cup champion Dale Earnhardt at the 2001 Daytona 500. But Sicking had long been saving lives -- hundreds each year -- of people involved in car crashes.

Everyday people.

As director of the Midwest Roadside Safety Facility at Nebraska, Sicking has dedicated his career to making America's highways safer. Among his many creations is a box installed at the end of guard rails that absorbs the impact of a crash and flattens the guard rail. Sicking's motivation remains the 13,000 people who die each year in this country in ran-off-road crashes.

"That's what we've been working on for 22 years, and it still forms the majority of my work," he said. "It's kind of ironic. We've been working in obscurity, literally, trying to save and actually saving hundreds of people's lives every year. We might save two or three a year, at the most, in racing, and now people know who I am."

When the Indy Racing League approached him in 1998 about developing a soft barrier to line the concrete walls at Indy, Sicking didn't want the job. He knew it would require adding about 15 people to his 19-person staff, and he did not want to develop relationships with people he would have to lay off three of four years later when the project was complete. But two of his staff members urged him to accept.

"I'm very happy we did it," said Sicking, who estimates the IRL and NASCAR, which joined the project in 2000, have a combined $1.15-million invested in the project. "It turned out to garner much more interest in our program within the university than I ever dreamed. We're trying as a group to enjoy our 15 minutes of fame and looking forward to returning to obscurity."

Sicking has slammed 19 authentic race cars -- open-wheel and stock -- into concrete walls in excess of 150 mph to simulate the worst possible crash conditions. With G-force loads reaching 140, the difference between life and death can depend upon the phase of the driver's heartbeat -- contracting is good, pumping is bad.

"When we do a test here, we pull a car up to race speed and crash it into the barrier; it's very realistic," he said. "We use a cable guidance system -- a tow cable that pulls them runs through a pulley right in front of where we want it to hit. That guidance system gets knocked off about 25 feet before it gets to the wall, one car length. It's free-wheeling when it hits. We try to be as realistic as possible."

Sicking's goal is to bring the G-force loads into a manageable range, fewer than 100 G's, where the combination of head and neck restraint devices, six-point harnesses and improved seats should keep drivers alive no matter the phase of their heartbeats.

The wall Sicking and his staff developed is called the SAFER -- Steel And Foam Energy Reduction -- barrier. Indy is the only track, at an expense of $800,000, to have it. All who crashed into the wall during the Indy 500 in May, and its beefed-up version for stock cars at the Brickyard 400 this month, walked away.

Asked by NASCAR chairman Bill France Jr. to design a barrier that will serve open-wheel and stock cars without changes, Sicking expects to be finished by the end of this year or early next year. Some tracks will have the barriers next season, he said, and he expects widespread installation for the 2004 season.

But would such a wall have saved Earnhardt? Sicking can't be sure.

"The G-force levels experienced by Earnhardt would have gone down," Sicking said. "Would that have saved his life? I can never say that. It would have given him a better chance. The critical-angle crash Earnhardt experienced is exactly the type of crash we're trying to accommodate. I look forward to reading stories about horrific crashes where the driver walks away."

© 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111

Contact the Times | Privacy Policy
Standard of Accuracy | Terms, Conditions & Copyright