  The topic of this paper are nonlinear traveling waves occuring in a system of
damped waves equations in one space variable. We extend the freezing method
from first to second order equations in time. When applied to a Cauchy problem,
this method generates a comoving frame in which the solution becomes
stationary. In addition it generates an algebraic variable which converges to
the speed of the wave, provided the original wave satisfies certain spectral
conditions and initial perturbations are sufficiently small. We develop a
rigorous theory for this effect by recourse to some recent nonlinear stability
results for waves in first order hyperbolic systems. Numerical computations
illustrate the theory for examples of Nagumo and FitzHugh-Nagumo type.
