Product Details

Traction Pad Ice Walker is a Footwear Traction device, providing improved safety while walking on icy surfaces, uniquely functioning differently from any others that have received U.S. patents. The product is made completely of textile components; specifically elastic belting, velcro fasteners and a hygroscopic frictional material (Traction Pad). The Traction Pad fits around both sides of the midpoint of the belting, with the velcro fasteners attached on opposite sides and ends of the belting. This allows it to be firmly wrapped around the outside of the wearer's shoes, with the traction pad in contact with the walking surface.

Improved traction is accomplished by two combined features of its operation. First, the traction
pad material presents an increased "co-efficient of sliding friction" to the bottom of the wearer's
shoes. Second, as the wearer is walking on icy surfaces, the traction pad becomes moist and
very cold, setting up a condition in which an instantaneous freezing action is occurring between
the bottom of the wearer's shoes and the icy surface. This freezing action isn't strong enough to
cause the wearer's shoes to become stuck to the ice, but it does provide additional traction to
enable the wearer to walk more safely on the ice.

This means of providing improved traction on ice, represents a completely different approach
from all previous types of traction devices, which utilized some form of abrasive, such as spikes, cleats and rock, glass or metal chips. Some even used various types of rough sand
paper. All such devices were designed to achieve the improved traction by penetrating into the
ice. My device does so in a much simpler and safer manner, by providing increased friction
without the need of any abrasive materials. It has also been proven to actually work better in
certain ice conditions.

Even though we don't get an abundance of frozen precipation in Raleigh,NC, we do have our
moments. The sleet storm of 1996 was my inspiration for this invention. We got at least four
inches of pure sleet, followed by a number of hours of freezing rain. What resulted was Raleigh
being covered with a giant four inch thick, hard and highly polished ice cube. Vehicles couldn't
crush through the mantle of ice. A friend of mine was a US Postal letter carrier. He told me that
all their special and expensive footwear equipment wouldn't work. Their cleats and spikes were
like ice skates, and they weren't very good ice skaters. They did find that wrapping some kind of
cloth around their feet did help give them better traction. I found that tying my socks around my
shoes helped, but the trick was trying to keep the socks secured around my shoes. I settled on
the concept of attaching "sock-like" material to heavy duty elastic belting, and utilizing "velcro type" fasteners to secure them around my shoes. Thus, my invention materialized.I had a sock
manufacturer fabricate a custom made "traction pad" component to go along with my bulk
purchasing of elastic belting and velcro fastening components. I had them sewn together to my specifications by a seamtress. Basic straight stiching is all that is involved, lending itself to easy mass production.

The simplicity of this device should enable it to be easily and affordably mass produced. My only experience in production costs is from the making of the functioning prototypes.