Nebraska research impacts vehicle safety worldwide

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UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA – When driving across the United States, Australia and many European countries, motorists oftentimes speed past a little part of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Even while watching NASCAR and Indy Racing League races, viewers are seeing the work of members of the UNL community.

No, this has nothing to do with the university sponsoring race cars; it has everything to do with safety.

UNL’s Nebraska Hall is home to one of the most internationally respected off-road collision research organizations, the Midwest Roadside Safety Facility.

The research facility has tested and designed a number of safety features, such as guardrails, for a number of states and countries including most European countries, Australia, New Zealand and Japan.

That kind of widespread exposure has made the facility one of the international leaders in the field of off-road collisions, said Dean Sicking, the facility’s director.

“Most states in the U.S. and many international countries see us as the leading authority in the world,” Sicking said. “Most products dealing with roadside safety come out of Nebraska.”

But what, exactly, does the facility do?

“In a nutshell, we basically deal with anything you can drive off the road and hit,” Sicking said. “That includes many things like guardrails, light poles and sign supports.”

The facility, which was established in 1989 by the late UNL professor Ed Post, researches the impact and effect of various types of vehicles, which run off of various roads at various speeds.

Consequently, crash testing makes up a large part of the facility’s research, Sicking said.

The facility is currently involved with research for the Indy Racing League and NASCAR and is trying to develop a barrier for racetracks. The high-speed crash tests provide a different perspective, Sicking said.

“Everybody needs something new and different,” he said. “It’s not every day that you deal with 200-mile-per-hour crashes.”

The center is more worried about developing safety barriers for everyday crashes, Sicking said.

“Every year, 12,000 people die,” he said. “We’re trying to shave that number down.”

In one study, the facility evaluated 500 serious fatal run-off accidents and tried to figure out why the people got hurt.

Variables like the speed of the vehicle, the grade of the roadside and the construction of any sort of barriers must be looked at, Sicking said.

“There’s a lot of things we can change to help save people’s lives,” Sicking said.

For many research centers and facilities, getting money is the hard part of research. For the Midwest Roadside Safety Facility, finding enough researchers to do the jobs that bring in the money is the hard part, Sicking said.

“We have no problem getting money,” Sicking said. “That’s unusual in a university setting.”

One of the biggest providers for the research facility is the Midwest States Regional Pooled Fund Program, which is a group of 11 states that came together to fund research of “run-off road accidents,” said Ron Faller, research assistant professor for the facility.

The Midwest States Regional Polled Fund Program, along with other agencies, provides UNL’s facility with nearly a half million dollars of work, Faller said.

“If not for the commitment of the agencies that keep coming back to us, we wouldn’t be nearly as successful as we are,” Faller said.

The facility’s success is due in large part to its 36 researchers comprised of university faculty, a diverse group of engineers and technicians and graduate and undergraduate UNL students, Faller said.

“Having 35 to 36 researchers is pretty large for a research facility,” Faller said. “It’s not very much for a self-supporting company, which the facility virtually is.”

While having a small staff of highly eager and highly trained researchers helps keep the facility’s quality at the top of the world, it also keeps the facility from taking on extra work, Faller said.

“It’s a catch-22,” Faller said. “The stuff we do is really good, really high quality, but we get behind.”

The group of researchers functions as a small family, Faller said, with everyone focusing on making driving safer for Nebraskans, Americans and citizens of the world.

“There’s not many people in the world who do what we do,” he said. “You don’t become a millionaire doing safety testing, but it’s rewarding to know that we do it well, and it’s rewarding to know that we’re saving lives.”

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