Safety Frist
SAFETY FRIST
A backyard inventor wants to put your Aunt Tillie on two wheels
Do NOT LAUGH AT THIS MAN or his unlikely looking inventions. He is trying to do the impossible.Tadeus Carl Winiecki wants to put the masses on two wheels. Tired of hearing the old I'd-ride-if-it-weren't-so-dangerous excuse. Winiecki decided that the only way to make motorcycling palatable to the naysayers was to design and develop a safer motorcycle.
Tha('was 10 years ago. Today. the contraption that Tad
Winiecki wheels out of his suburban San Diego garage on a daily basis is an embodiment of ideas that he be lieves could increase the motorcy cling population fourfold. Winiecki calls it a safercycle-aiways rhyming the "cyc1e~" Arlo Guthrie-like. with "pickIe'~-and claims that the bike will protect its rider in a 35-mph side collision or a head-on crash in which both vehicles are traveling at 45 mph.
To get that kind of~protection. Winiecki started with a stock 1976 BMW R90S and then started weld-
ing. To give the rider more space in a collision, he added six inches to the wheelbase, necessitating a similar ex tension of the bike's driveshaft. Next came steel tubing that forms a kind of roil cage, or as he puts it, a "non intrusion zone." The &ont portion of the tubing employs what he calls an `~anti-somersault" front end, which is designed o bend downward in a head-on collision and prevent the sat~rcycle from flipping over.
But that tubing is only the safer cycle's first line of defense. Since he wanted the rider to stay within the relatively safe confines of the bike's roll cage. Winiecki worked out a re straint system that keeps the rider in place during a crash. The system con sists of a quick-detach metal "corset" that clamps around the rider's pelvis. and two padded shoulder straps. -
DAVID EDWARDS
Despite the roll cage and r~straint system. Winiecki reasoned that even more protection was needed in the event of a high-speed frontal crash. So he came up with a system wherein the seat can move foward to dissipate some of the crash energy and deliver less of a shock to the rider. The key component of the system is a shock absorber. which is actually an alloy tube with a mandrel at one end at tached to a cable that is in turn con nected to the seat. In a high-energy crash, the mandrel is pulled through
the tube, and the seat and rider can move forward and upward. Since the rider would then be outside the roll cage and therefore unprotected. a system made up of ropes. springs and pulleys pulls him back quickly into DOSitO1L~
rNowbefore you get the idea that Winiecki is some kind of safety nut who wants to save all of us from our selves. you should know that he real izes that most motorcyclists wouldn't consider owning a safercycle or any thing like it. By his own estimates, only two percent of current riders would be potential customers. You see. Winiecki's safety-orange busi ness card might read "Motorcycle Crash Protection Research Consul tant." but in reality he's a motorcycl ist, and has been one thr 26 of his 41 years. He knows what fun it is to ride, and readily admits that some of the enjoyment of motorcycling is lost when you stretch wheelbases, add roll cages and strap riders into re straint systems.
On the other hand, he knows that there are lots of people intrigued by motorcycling who are just too afraid
to throw a leg over a conventional bike. The safercycie is Winiecki's an swer. And who's to say he's wrong? Certainly, in the 100 years that mo torcycles have been around, no one seems to have come up with a better answer. And Lord knows, motorcycle companies are always on the lookout for schemes to attract new buyers.
Still, the day when you can saunter into your local Honda dealer and buy a \Viniecki-replica SafetyWing seems far off. For one thing. his ideas are unproven. Even though Winiecki is an engineer at General Dynamics by trade, he can't tell you if the bike's
safety systems. especially the shockabsorber seat, will work as he envi sions. And as it sits now, the Winiecki safercycle. at almost 700 pounds. is simply too intimidating for beginning riders, the very market it aims to entice. In its defense, the current bike is
only an engineering model, one step below a prototype. What Winiecki needs now is someone-a govern ment agency. perhaps-to underwrite tests on his idea. In the best of scenar ios. Winiecki sees a major manufac turer buying his concepts and putting together a smaller, lighter-weight safercycle-a 500cc model, say-that borrows heavily from scooter tech nology, with an automatic transmis sion and sleek plastic body panels.
If that happens, there may very well be a Winiecki in every garage. But for now, there's only one-along with the dreams of a man who would like to spread the word of motorcy cling to the non-believers.
