A native of Lowell, Mass., he received his bachelor's degree in civil engineering from Merrimack College and his master's and Ph.D. from Northwestern University, where he was supported by a National Defense Education Act Fellowship. He joined the engineering faculty at the University of Connecticut in 1966 and for a half decade conducted research in vibrations, elasticity and the stability of structures. In the early 1970s, UConn's Civil Engineering Department got a phone call that changed Carney's life. The department wanted to find a way to prevent such tragedies in the future. With his background in structural mechanics, Carney seemed a logical choice to tackle the problem.
Structural materials are sensitive to the rate at which loads are applied.
The characteristics of steel, for example, change dramatically when loads are applied quickly. For the Connecticut DOT, Carney designed a device made of four thin-walled mild steel cylinders attached to an aluminum plate on one end and the back of a highway service truck on the other. The design was verified in a series of crash tests that proved that it could protect both road crews and drivers. By the mid-1970s, the TMAs were put into service on Connecticut highways. The success of the truck-mounted attenuator led Carney, with support from the Federal Highway Administration and the Connecticut DOT, to develop similar devices to protect errant motorists from roadside hazards.