TIME TO MAKE OUR VOICES HEARD

TIME TO MAKE OUR VOICES HEARD

By Dennis Michelsen

Staff Columnist

July 12, 2000

Racing is a dangerous business. FACT! NASCAR has been second to none in improving driver safety through improvements to racecars over the years. FACT! I would not insult your intelligence by suggesting that we can ever make this sport risk free. However, I believe that if you are ever satisfied with the progress you have made that you are doomed to suffer harsh consequences. Would all the safety devices in the world saved Kenny and Adam? Who knows, maybe it was just their time to go? But shouldn't we do everything we can (within reason of course) to help protect our racing heroes before we make more martyrs to the cause of driver safety? In the immortal words of Howard Beale from the 1976 movie NETWORK, "I'M MAD AS HELL AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANY MORE!"

Kenny Irwin's death really upset me. As many of you know from reading some of my previous articles I didn't think much of his talents at the Winston Cup level. But Kenny was only 30 years young and listening to his family and friends we realize he was more than just what he did for a living! Would he ever become the next Winston Cup superstar? WHO CARES! He will be missed for who he was and not just for what he did. His death got me ticked off enough at myself to do a little research on racing safety. What I found amazed and angered me enough to want to share it with you today.

A few clicks around the NET got me started on research into racing accidents and soft wall technology. It amazed me that the last three deaths and more of the serious crashes occurred on one-mile flat tracks. Rick Carelli, Jeff Krogh, and John Nemechek all have that in common with Adam and Kenny. What does this prove? Are flat tracks to blame? Not exactly but what it proves is that it isn't how fast you are going but how quick you stop that is the problem. With all the technology advances in racecar safety over the years, very little has been done to make the racetracks safer at the same time. Soft wall technology has the chance to improve that area of safety. My thanks to Matt McLaughlin of the very fine web site SpeedFx.com for sending me a lengthy report on soft wall technology written nine years ago. This report and some additional digging startled me quite a bit. Am I suggesting that all of these accidents were preventable? NOPE! However, I did uncover some fascinating information.

Lincoln Webb, a race fan that happens to be a highway barrier engineer, wrote a comprehensive report in 1991 called "The Performance and Design of Race Circuit Safety Hardware." All attempts to reach Mr. Webb have failed. He did make some very interesting comments that changed my thinking forever. Racing is a dangerous business and that fact will never go away, he said. It is possible, however, to design barriers that help increase the odds that an accident will be survivable. Barriers have two functions… containment and energy management.

The harsh reality is that since keeping cars from flying into the stands is good for business, only containment needs to be addressed. Building barriers for the brute force job of containment ONLY is also less expensive than dealing with energy management that COULD save a driver's life! That's a sickening fact indeed! Also, in the simplest analysis, there are two ways for a driver to be killed. Something hitting them (intrusion related trauma) or excessive acceleration. The first is obvious but the second takes some time to fully understand.

NASCAR has done a tremendous job improving racecar safety so that intrusion related traumas have decreased dramatically. We are amazed when Geoffrey Bodine's truck flip-flops down the main straight at Daytona like Mary Lou Retton and he survives! But that is due to NASCAR's technology advances in racecar safety. Even if nothing hits the driver snuggled in his safety seat, however the human body can only stand so much deceleration. The experts say a good rule of thumb is a force of 50G… in other words fifty times the acceleration of gravity. While injuries can still be severe at lower G forces, the driver will have a better chance to survive. Our good old racing buddy Sir Isaac Newton tells us it is easy to calculate such forces using his time tested equation of Force equaling Mass times Acceleration. My old high school Physics teacher "Doc R" would be proud of me for remembering that equation. It also tells us an interesting fact…that stopping the car quickly is not the answer. Even if we invented the greatest super brakes the car could stop so abruptly that the driver would be seriously hurt or killed by the massive deceleration experienced without even scratching the car . So we have to design better walls.

Despite the press reports, Kenny Irwin did not crash "head on" into the wall. Again a simple application of physics tells us that had he done so he would have stopped right there in place instead of tumbling down the track. In fact it is almost impossible for a driver to even intentionally drive into a wall head on due to the wonders of geometry. On most racetracks the most severe angle of impact that a driver could make routinely would be around 45 degrees. This is actually great news since the shallower the impact angle the quicker the acceleration experienced decreases. I will save you the math but for a crash of 130mph (common speed at the end of the turns at NHIS) at an impact angle of 45 degrees the deceleration experienced would equal that of a head on crash at only 88mph. That is surely no walk in the park but again saving you the math the distance required to stop a car at 88mph in a head on crash is only about 6 feet! The wall has to give 6 feet to make the crash more likely to be survived! The sad fact is that while the so-called soft wall technology is not cheap it COULD make racing safer. We have seen such great advances in racecar safety features over the past 30 years but we still have them crash into cement! Isn't it time for that to change?

I do not make any claims to be an expert in this field. I have done research of EXPERT findings that suggest that we can do better. I am actually quite ashamed that it took two deaths in eight weeks to make me see the light. I am embarrassed to say I did NOT do my part to make this situation any better… until now. Yes there are hundreds of complicating factors that drive the cost of this technology into the millions of dollars per track. Different strengths of walls would have to be used for different types and speeds of racecars… again trust my math on that! All I am saying is for ALL of us to try to do a better job of making this sport even safer. Another web site, Racing Reality, has contacted me and said they will also help to get the word out! (Thanks Jenn) Butch Bellah has given me a "Bully Pulpit" with this web space to preach to our congregation that the time for change is now! Let your voice be heard! Go to your computers and phones and scream out loud… "I'M SAD AS HELL AND TIRED OF THESE DAMN MEMORIALS TO OUR FALLEN HEROES!" Ask the parties that run our great sport to PLEDGE a percentage of the money from the enormous new television contract to research, develop, and install better safety walls at OUR racetracks. Please help me today!

Dennis Michelsen is Staff Columnist at Frontstretch.com. You can read a new, original column right here every Tuesday and Thursday. You may also leave a message for Dennis on the Message Boards or email him at [email protected]