IMS’ PEDS Barrier Started Safer Barrier Revolution 10 Years Ago

INDIANAPOLIS, Wednesday, July 23, 2008 – Ten years ago, Indianapolis
Motor Speedway and Indy Racing League officials were determined to take
the next step in motorsports safety. What they produced was a revolution
with a funny name: the PEDS Barrier.

Today the SAFER Barrier (Steel and Foam Energy Reduction) has gained
international acclaim as an energy-absorbing barrier, credited with
drastically reducing the level of injury or death on high-speed oval
racetracks.

The truth is, without the research, effort and daring trials that marked
the PEDS Barrier’s short existence on the walls of the Indianapolis
Motor Speedway, there might not have been a SAFER Barrier.

The Polyethylene Energy Dissipating System, or PEDS Barrier, was
attached to the inside retaining wall at the exit of the Indianapolis
Motor Speedway’s Turn 4 on May 18, 1998, marking the first time in the
track’s storied history that an entity designed to soften crashes was
attached to its concrete walls.

“The theory of ‘soft walls’ had been around since I could remember,”
said Leo Mehl, who served as executive director of the Indy Racing
League from 1996-99. “I can remember lots of attempts to put foam on
(walls). I remember Smokey Yunick designed a racetrack so the walls
would give – the whole thing would move back. There had been a lot of
ideas and attempts.”

The problem with foam, however, is that it would worsen the accident by
snagging the car, causing an unpredictable and often-violent reaction.

The PEDS Barrier consisted of 550 feet of 5-foot-long, overlapping
high-density polyethylene impact plates that each contained two
16-inch-diameter cylinders made of the same material. The goal was for
the cylinders to compress when impacted by a race car, reducing the
force of impact while the plates would provide a smooth surface that
would allow the car to move freely, unlike foam. Finally, thanks to
polyethylene’s flexible yet durable consistency, the PEDS Barrier would
return to its normal configuration following the impact.

Mehl worked for Goodyear tire from 1959-1996, and spent the last 22
years managing the company’s racing programs worldwide. He was no
stranger to taking risks for the sake of improving racing safety.

“My personal opinion was, it’s better to try something than not take the
risk at all. Somebody has got to start this process, and nobody ever
had,” he said.

The Indy Racing League’s safety committee, comprised of IMS and IRL
officials, worked with retired GM Motorsports engineer John Pierce, who
tested a number of the committee’s barrier ideas with an impact
sled-testing system at Wayne State University.

The committee knew it was on to something when the sled tests showed
that the G-forces associated with a high-speed impact with an immovable
concrete wall was reduced by 30 to 40 g’s. The initial spike of energy,
caused by the rapid deceleration associated with hitting an immovable
object, is usually to blame for serious driver injuries, particularly
head injuries.

Once the PEDS Barrier design was selected, the committee also did some
“low-tech” testing at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in spring 1998,
before the track opened for 82nd Indianapolis 500 activities. Track
officials placed several sections of the Barrier on the Speedway’s walls
and Mehl described, with several bursts of laughter, the test scene:

“It was a Chitwood Thrill Show technique,” he said. “They went to a
junkyard and bought two old heaps (cars) – two of the same model so you
could do the same test twice. Joie (Chitwood, now IMS president and COO)
rigged the steering wheels so we didn’t have to have a driver in there.
We towed the cars with wreckers, got it up to 50 mph, aimed at the wall,
turned the wrecker at the last second and hit it (PEDS Barrier) twice.
We were quite pleased with ourselves!”

After the test at IMS, Mehl said he lobbied IMS Chief Executive Officer
Tony George to allow the IRL Safety Committee to place the
previously-mentioned 550-foot section of PEDS Barrier at the exit of
Turn 4.

Mehl gives George a lot of credit for giving the committee the go-ahead.
Little did they know, within a few months a seeming defeat of their
ideas would spark the move toward one of the most revolutionary
creations in racing history.

“The bottom line is when you do anything different in racing, you take a
great big risk of making the situation worse,” Mehl said. “Tony George
took a big risk to let us put that wall in. And so, there it started.”

The PEDS Barrier was in place for Miller Lite Carb Day practice and the
82nd Indianapolis 500, but did not sustain any IndyCar Series car
impacts. The 1998 Allstate 400 at the Brickyard weekend would be a
completely different story.

The International Race of Champions (IROC) series made its debut at
Indianapolis during the 1998 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series weekend. Two-time
Indianapolis 500 winner Arie Luyendyk was among the IROC participants,
enjoying his first opportunity to compete in a stock car at the fabled
2.5-mile oval where he won the “500” in 1990 and 1997.

On Lap 3 of the inaugural IROC race on July 31, Trans-Am champion Tommy
Kendall made contact with the outside retaining wall exiting Turn 4 and
bounced back into Luyendyk’s car, sending him into a spin – and headed
straight toward the PEDS Barrier.

Luyendyk’s car did a 180-degree spin and hit the wall broadside on the
right side of the car. The impact can only be described as immense –
arguably the most violent stock car crash in Speedway history. It pulled
several PEDS Barrier impact plates and polyethylene cylinders from the
wall and spread debris – mostly PEDS materials and sheet metal from
Luyendyk’s IROC Pontiac – across the track.

“At that particular moment, I was with Tony (George) in his suite
watching the IROC race,” Mehl said. “When (Luyendyk) hit, he hit at a
terrible angle, an angle that often results in injury. We went trackside
and the Barrier had pretty much spread itself everywhere.”

The two men were upset at the time, according to Mehl, because they felt
like the PEDS experiment had failed. But they received a call from
someone who knew Indianapolis Motor Speedway – and the nuances of car
safety and accidents – like the back of his hand: A.J. Foyt.

“The interesting part was, Foyt was watching the replays from his suite
over in Turn 2, and he called Tony right away and said, ‘Tony, he
probably wouldn’t have walked away if that barrier wasn’t there.’ Foyt
told Tony what I had said, that Luyendyk hit at the worst possible angle
and was fortunate to be alive.”

Luyendyk walked away from the accident with only a concussion, and was
driving in the IndyCar Series two weeks later.

The accident proved that the PEDS Barrier had several flaws – primarily
the springing action that had sent Luyendyk’s car back into traffic and
the debris field caused by the violent removal of the impact plates from
their wall mounts. But clearly IMS and IRL officials were on to
something – the PEDS Barrier had also saved a popular race driver from
serious injury.

“We knew the Barrier had taken at least 30 or 40 g’s off the hit, (but)
as we cleaned up the debris the next Monday it became obvious that we
needed to get some more help,” Mehl said. “The most experienced guys we
knew in the business for guardrails, attenuators and such, was the
University of Nebraska.”

The IRL Safety Committee made contact, in fall 1998, with Dr. Dean
Sicking and his associates at the Midwest Roadside Safety Facility,
located at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Sicking and his associates added the scientific muscle and testing
facilities required to build a barrier that would do everything the PEDS
Barrier did to take the initial spike of energy off of impacts, but also
move back into position slowly to prevent a car from “bouncing” back
onto the track. The barrier also had to be strong enough to stay intact,
and furthermore, it had to be compatible for both 1,500-pound IndyCars
and 3,500-pound stock cars. Not an easy task.

Sicking recommended that the idea of using a polyethylene-skinned
barrier be scuttled.

“From the word ‘go’ we knew that we needed to establish bending capacity
in the skin and that polyethylene would never get there,” said Sicking.
“It’s not stiff enough to keep it from wrapping around the front of a
car.”

Midwest Roadside Safety Facility officials recommended using a steel
skin, and crash testing revealed that occupant safety increased 30
percent as a result.

Meanwhile, Speedway officials continued with the evolution of their
work, installing an updated PEDS Barrier, called simply PEDS-2, at IMS
in 1999. It would be impacted only once, in a relatively low-speed
accident in Indianapolis 500 practice.

As development of a redesigned barrier continued in September 2000, IMS,
IRL and Nebraska officials reached a point where, knowing that many
tracks around the country played host to both 1,500-pound open-wheel
cars and 3,500-pound stock cars, it was time to construct a barrier that
withstood both high-speed open-wheel and stock-car impacts.

Brian Barnhart, the Indy Racing League’s senior vice president of racing
operations, met with NASCAR officials Mike Helton and Gary Nelson in
September 2000 at Richmond (Va.) International Raceway, and NASCAR
joined the program at that time.

NASCAR’s involvement consisted of arranging for teams to provide stock
cars for crash testing, by making a NASCAR official, the late Steve
Peterson, available to help the University of Nebraska officials better
understand the physical characteristics of stock cars and stock car
crashes, and by providing part of the financing for the project from
September 2000 on forward.

Nineteen months later, officials from the Indianapolis Motor Speedway,
Indy Racing League, NASCAR and University of Nebraska Lincoln gathered
at IMS for a landmark announcement on May 1, 2002 to introduce the SAFER
Barrier.

George also used the occasion to announce that IMS had invested several
million dollars to install the SAFER Barrier in time for the opening day
of practice for the 86th Indianapolis 500.

After years of investment and investigation, it was a proud day for
those involved. Mehl credits George for taking risks on a number of
fronts.

“Regardless of what we needed in terms of finance, we would explain to
him (George) what we needed and his attitude toward safety was,
‘Whatever you have to have, you have to have,'” said Mehl. “He never
questioned a penny that IRL spent on safety matters, especially
development of the (energy-absorbing) walls.

“I spent most of my professional life in racing tires, so understand I’m
not a safety expert, but I can’t image any other safety feature that
made so much difference,” Mehl said. “Racing will never be completely
safe, but it’s safer now than it ever has been in my lifetime.”

Information gathered from accidents involving the original SAFER Barrier
resulted in today’s second-generation SAFER Barrier, which graces the
walls of most tracks. The Indianapolis Motor Speedway received its
second-generation SAFER Barrier in March 2005, following a comprehensive
repaving project.

Despite its success, one could feel safe making the assumption that the
SAFER Barrier is not the final answer in energy-absorbing barrier
technology. It is effective and it has saved numerous drivers from
serious injury, but science is always on the move.

As motorsports history is written, the PEDS Barrier’s life as the
cutting-edge energy-dissipating technology will be considered extremely
brief. But one fact simply cannot be taken away from the IRL Safety
Committee members who are responsible for the PEDS Barrier: their
efforts of 10 years ago, and the product of their efforts, fostered a
revolution.

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