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Engineer who helped with racing safety now focusing on football helmets

Dr. Dean Sicking is one of the men lauded with the creation of the SAFER barrier in auto racing. And now he's wanting to help advance safety in football.

According to CBS Sports, Sicking is going to test a new football helmet that he says is designed to reduce concussions by 75 percent. When testing begins in October, Sicking hopes for a 50 percent reduction.

“Much of the football helmet industry sticks to the mantra, ‘We can't prevent concussions' and that's where they stop,” Sicking told CBS. “They try to improve themselves on arcane procedures that are designed to prevent skull fractures but doesn't do anything to prevent concussions.”

Perhaps a bit ironically, Sicking is a professor at the University of Alabama-Birmingham. UAB dropped football after the 2014 season.

The SAFER (Steel and Foam Energy Reduction) barrier, made mandatory in the turns of all tracks that host NASCAR races after the dealth of Dale Earnhardt in 2001, is, on a basic level, an Oreo wall. Instead of a bare concrete wall, an outer wall of steel tubing is built in front of the concrete wall with foam blocks in between. The goal of the wall is that it absorbs the energy from the cars that hit it, lessening the impact.

It's the same type of thing Sicking wants to do with his football helmets  – he wants the helmet to absorb as much of the energy from a hit as possible. To do that, he said he's used a different type of outer shell on the helmet. However, he didn't reveal to CBS what it is.

“They'd all catch up real fast if I told you what we're using,” Sicking said. “Right now, I think we have about six months to a year lead on others.”

The helmet also has a facemask that is relatively malleable when it comes to contact.

It's important to emphasize that the helmet – or any helmet being developed for that matter like the Riddell SpeedFlex helmet introduced in 2014 or helmets lined with Kevlar – can't prevent concussions.

In the aftermath of Kyle Busch's crash at Daytona on Feb. 21, the SAFER barrier has been central to a safety theme in NASCAR. Busch broke his right leg and left foot when his car slid into an inside concrete wall not protected by SAFER barrier. At a cost of $500 a foot, SAFER is expensive. But NASCAR  – a sport starting a 10-year television contract valued at $8 billion for its top series  – isn't unable to afford it. Inexplicably, the barrier has only been mandated in specific sections of track.

But just like there's not a helmet that can prevent concussions, SAFER barrier doesn't prevent injuries in NASCAR and IndyCar crashes.

Sicking is cited in the CBS piece as saying that no fatalities and one serious injury have been sustained at tracks that have SAFER barrier. On the surface, that's a giant leap.

Busch's teammate Denny Hamlin was also sidelined because of broken bones in a crash recently. Similar to Busch, Hamlin hit an unprotected wall in 2013 and fractured his back. He missed four races. Busch's timetable for his recovery in unknown.

There have been injuries with SAFER barrier-involved accidents too. Michael Annett cracked and dislocated his sternum in a head-on collision with the SAFER barrier in turns one and two at Daytona in 2013. He missed eight races (He's the yellow car in the video).

In 2012, Dale Earnhardt Jr. was sidelined for two races after sustaining two concussions. The first came at an August 29 tire test at Kansas Speedway. Junior said he lost a tire going into the first turn. His hit into the outside wall – covered in SAFER barrier – was reported at 40 Gs.

In 2006, Tony Stewart sustained a broken shoulder blade after crashes on consecutive nights at Charlotte. His first hit was against a non-SAFER protected wall while the second was against a wall with SAFER barrier.

But we can all agree that increased safety should be a never-ending quest and Sicking says there are lessons to be learned by quick adaption and testing. He hopes to have the helmets game ready in the middle of the 2015 season.

“If we waited until we had the perfect helmet, it would take 2-3 years to get it on the helmet,” Sicking told CBS. “A lot of players would be injured. Besides that, there's a lot to learn once we get it on the players. If our technology doesn't generate the reduction in concussions we expect, that will be a big eye opener, or if it does work, that will be a big vote of confidence and allow us to continue down that path.”

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Nick Bromberg is the assistant editor of Dr. Saturday on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at nickbromberg@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!