It's Probably Not Safe If It's Not SAFER
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I
bid you welcome gentle readers, and a cordial greeting
as well to our assigned reader of all things NASCAR. Now, with the formalities
out of the way, let’s get right down to the business at hand. If you came here
expecting to talk about some Chase thing, fahgeddaboudit!
Go Kevin (!) is all I have to say on that subject.
Of
far more importance, though somewhat overlooked in all the hype and hoopla that
comprised Sunday’s programming of the Cup Series race by NBC, was the truck
race in Las Vegas the preceding evening. (Saturday, October 4) Only 15 laps
into the race, a truck driven by Tyler Reddick got loose and “way out of shape”,
as they say. As the back of his truck slued around, pointing him down the
track, the front end caught the truck of his teammate, 21-year old Austin
Theriault, at a cross-angle, sending Theriault’s car
straight up and into the wall… no, wait, let me rephrase that… into the
unprotected and unforgiving concrete wall!
Theriault
was at top speed when the two trucks met; that changed his direction and headed
him for the wall… still at top speed. This still might have had a happy ending,
had the wall been protected by a SAFER barrier at the point of impact, but one
look at the way his truck lifted into the air on impact, then bounced back down
the track, by now almost unrecognizable as a truck, told a different story
entirely. Below is a picture of the Las Vegas track, as seen here last March
when the Cup series raced there.
See
that bit of red, just coming out of turn four on the outside wall? It looks
strangely out of place and lonely, surrounded by SAFER on “most” of the outside
walls. It was addressed at the last Cup race, which was in early March, while
Kyle Busch was still wearing casts from his experience with the unprotected concrete
of Daytona the previous month. Daytona, we are told, will be fully protected on
every wall before next year’s opener of the 2016 season. Las Vegas has
apparently done nothing.
Earlier
in the year, the Orlando Sentinel did a survey that included all the Cup
tracks, though some declined to participate. Las Vegas did respond to the
survey with this brief statement:
SAFER changes: Modifications to barriers at pit-road
openings and to cutout area near Turn 3.
Since
that bit of red we see on the map is directly opposite the entrance to pit
road, one might have assumed that was what they were talking about, but then,
you know what they say about “assume.” There is still no SAFER protecting that
spot… and a whole lot more on that track.
This
is what we saw on Saturday night:
At
the end of the video, you will hear the FOX broadcasters remarking how great it
was to see Austin get out of the broken truck… but what the video does not show
is that he went straight to the ground, and was placed on a stretcher for
transport to University Medical Center in Las Vegas for further evaluation. According
to a statement released on Sunday morning by Brad Keselowski Racing, “Theriault
underwent a comprehensive CT scan of the upper body, which showed a 10 percent
compression fracture of the lower back.”
If
that injury sounds somewhat familiar, it is the same injury sustained by Denny
Hamlin in another ugly crash, that one at Fontana in 2013.
That
should be a sufficient amount of watching kids break backs to get the attention
of most everyone reading, so I’ll save a few others for a later time. It occurs
to me that because he’s quite new on the premier racing scene, some reading
here today are probably not familiar with Austin Theriault (pronounced
“Terry-oh.”) He is a 21-year old from Northern Maine, and has done some racing
in both ARCA and in Xfinity for Junior Motorsports.
This
second picture of Austin was taken post-wreck, I believe at the University
Medical Center. Do you see anything in the picture that you find disturbing? I
do. From the bruise on his left forehead and the cut and bruise above his left
eye, it’s painfully obvious that his head came in contact with something during
the crash. With HANS in place, the driver is “supposed” to be protected from
that, but even a HANS can’t control objects or parts of the truck itself from
being torn loose and flung about as a result of the impact and the G-forces it
produces from the sudden stop.
SAFER
barrier is designed to significantly reduce those G-forces, leaving both driver
and vehicle so much better off than what the alternative might be… in this case,
a compression fracture of the lower spine. How does SAFER accomplish doing all
of that?
The safer barrier functions
by separating the collision into two separate impacts. During the
collision with the SAFER wall, the car accelerates a section of the wall and
slows the velocity of the impacting car. The wall is tuned to move a wall
mass that is approximately the same as the weight of the car. Recall High
School physics… when a moving object strikes a stationary mass of about the
same weight in a fully plastic impact “Conservation of Momentum” analysis would
indicate that the moving object loses about half of its velocity. In our
case the car loses about ½ of its velocity perpendicular to the wall.
This impact throws the driver toward the wall and his belts begin to restrain
him. As the foam is crushed, the driver stretches his belts. Before the
foam is fully crushed, the belts begin to pull the driver back toward his seat.
When the driver is moving back toward his seat, he will not be exposed to the
high decal rates that occur when the steel SAFER wall strikes the concrete
barrier. In essence, we cut the effective impact speed in half and this
generally cuts the risk of serious injury and fatality by a factor off 4.
That
is a description given to me by Dr. Dean Sicking when asked for an explanation
of what and how SAFER accomplishes all that it does. On Sunday morning, I was
challenged by one of Twitter’s famous “inanimate objects” as to the necessity
of SAFER barriers “Everywhere” as is now the plea of many drivers and members
of the media. This object… I really cannot say if it is a he or a she, as it
hides behind the sobriquet of “The Orange Cone”, picked up a buzz word or
phrase somewhere and has the idea that it sounds impressive and therefore
answers all questions. That phrase is “angle of impact.”
In
the simplest of ways, the angle of impact does apply to auto racing, but it’s
actually a measurement used to examine blood spatters. I understood what the
Cone was trying to say, but it’s difficult to converse in 140-character
increments. I finally gave up, not because I ceded any point to the Cone, but
because this scribe can’t say “good morning” in 140 words, let alone
characters. In this forum, I can say what I mean and have time to explain it
without being patted on my widdle head and told, “I
know this is hard for you to understand, Patty.” A condescending tone will get
one absolutely nowhere with this old timer. Yes, I am a woman… and old one at
that, but never, ever have I been a stupid one. If the man that gave the
explanation above… who holds a doctorate in mechanical engineering, can
confidently feel that I will understand what he says, why would someone pretending
to be a traffic cone think that I might be incapable of understanding
him/her/it?
It
was suggested that I ask Dr. Sicking his feelings on SAFER barriers being
everywhere. That wasn’t necessary, since I already had the answer, but danged
if it just wouldn’t fit in 140 characters. Here’s a bit of how Dean answered
the question, among others when asked by Dustin Long, doing an interview for
NBC Sports. The original gist of the conversation centered on Dean’s doubt that
it could all be accomplished this year, mostly because of short supplies and
the small number of qualified installers.
Still, Sicking says the idea
of lining tracks with SAFER barriers is one he approves.
“In terms of the barrier’s
performance, I can’t imagine a situation where putting a barrier up would be a
bad thing,’’ he said.
The
conversation between Long and Sicking also included some reference to the much
maligned “tire barriers”, which some tracks have tried to sell as the equal of
SAFER… something your scribe will never buy.
“There are situations where
the SAFER barrier is not the best alternative,’’ he said. “If you hit the wall
at 90 degrees at 160 miles an hour, it might be better to have tires.
“When you go straight into
the wall … then the tire barrier gives you more space to absorb some of the
energy and spread it out over a longer period of time and reduce the risk to
the driver.’’
Sicking said that hitting
the tires at angle, though, can cause additional problems.
“If you have an oblique hit
… then tire barriers would snag you and stop you faster and be more dangerous
than a SAFER barrier.’’
Of
course, the problem one can see immediately, is that in order to know that
tires might be a better choice, one would have to be able to predict exactly
how a vehicle was going to impact a wall. Predicting impact is impossible,
except in “test tube” instances, where one is evaluating the outcome of several
different types of impact. Therefore, tires are fine if you can know in advance
exactly how a car/truck/cycle is going to make contact with the wall. I believe
this may be where my Cone friend got the theory that SAFER is not necessary.
Allow me to contradict that with Dr. Sicking’s last words of the interview.
“Quite frankly, I don’t
think we know how good it [SAFER] is yet,’’ he said. “You define quality based
on failure. It has yet to fail. Nobody has died yet, so I don’t think we know
how good it is. It is far better than I thought it was when we put it up. We
took a lot of hits that I thought would have been fatal and drivers walked away
with very minor injuries.’’
Gentle
readers, I don’t believe anyone could give a more glowing endorsement than
that, and it boggles my mind that anyone or anything could fail to understand
it. Expressed with the greatest simplicity, SAFER SAVES LIVES! Seeing young
Austin after that wreck on Saturday night, I’d say we are very lucky that the
lack of SAFER did not take a life this past weekend.
If
anyone wants to learn more about the SAFER barriers, I have files full of SAFER
data and references, but for now, I think this would be a good time to break
for our Classic Country Closeout.
This is a real old-timer,
originally recorded by Jimmy Wakely and Margaret
Whiting. This recording is slightly newer, but it’s the one I’ve always loved.
This is Rex Allen Sr. and Patti Page singing, “A Broken-Down Merry-go-Round.”
Oh
heck, let’s stay with Rex Allen for a bit. Known as “The Last of the Singing
Cowboys”, Rex came along in the early 50s when Gene and Roy were beginning to
show their age. He has a wonderful voice, but about the time he came on the
scene, the B-Westerns were beginning to lose some of their popularity. That
didn’t mean the man couldn’t sing, and here’s a bouncy little number, slightly
reminiscent of Hank Williams’ “Settin’ the Woods on
Fire.” This one is “Till the Well Goes Dry”
This
one is a toe tapper, for sure. I have no idea where it came from originally. It
sounds as though it perhaps came from the British Isles… pick your country. It
makes no never mind… just sit back and enjoy Rex as he sings “Rack up the Balls
Boys.”
And
in closing… I couldn’t play Rex Allen without including this long-time
super-favorite from my early teens. This is Rex, with his incomparable
rendition of “Crying in the Chapel.” Just listen to that voice!
~
PattyKay