A look at the state of safety in NASCAR
By Marty Smith, Turner Sports Interactive
October 10, 2001
5:00 PM EDT (2100 GMT)
COMMENTARY
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Marty Smith
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We can’t be getting used to this. Please God, tell me we’re not.
In the bleak days since young Blaise Alexander died in a crash during the ARCA race at Lowe’s Motor Speedway, driver safety -- or lack thereof -- has once again become the predominate focus of discussion in the NASCAR community. Only this time, the mood in the garage does not merely include sorrow. Sadly enough, with Alexander’s passing comes the bitter coldness of repetition.
“The thing that bothers me, personally, the most is that we’re all getting used to this,” said James Ince, crew chief for Johnny Benson’s No. 10 Pontiac. “Anytime you’re getting used to something, it’s happening way too often.”
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James Ince
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That’s a vast understatement. Even one on-track death is entirely too many and we’ve experienced five in the past 17 months. That’s one death every three and a half months. With those odds, we’re sitting on pins and needles wondering who’s next.
That scares the hell out of me. I have friends out there.
“I’ve said it a thousand times, one death is too many and we’ve had way too many,” said Jeff Burton. “It’s getting old. Anytime somebody dies it’s sad, but when somebody dies that’s really young and was doing something that we all enjoy, and you see that it can be that violent, it takes the wind out of your sails.
“I’m ready for the year to get over. It’s been a long year. We’ve had the deaths, the (terror attacks) three-and-a-half weeks ago. It’s just been a long year.”
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Dale Earnhardt
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It’s been a disheartening year for racers period, be they NASCAR or not. The landmark passing of Dale Earnhardt on the last lap of the Daytona 500 sent tremors through the entire industry and raised safety awareness to a new plateau. Still, despite a more intensive focus on safety, drivers continue to suffer life-altering injuries, some of which are resulting in death.
Steve Park suffered a concussion in a freak accident at Darlington, in which he inexplicably shot down the track and directly into the path of a full speed Larry Foyt during a caution lap. More than a month later, he’s still in daylong rehabilitation sessions, clinging to hopes that he might return to the cockpit.
CART star Alex Zanardi lost his legs and 70 percent of the blood in his body in a crash during a race three weeks ago, and were it not for the swift work of CART’s medical team, he may have lost his life. His current goal -- simply to walk again.
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Blaise Alexander
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Alexander is dead. So are Earnhardt, Adam Petty, Kenny Irwin and Tony Roper. Like the four who died before him, Alexander wasn’t wearing a head and neck restraint system. According to Burton, he also had older head support braces on his seat.
That’s not acceptable any longer.
“I wear my Hutchens device by religion now, and I’m mad at Blaise Alexander for not having that stuff,” said 2000 NASCAR Busch Series champion Jeff Green. “The kid wanted to race really bad and I guess he’d get in anything.
“He just wanted to race. I’m a little mad at God for taking him so early, for taking all those guys so early, but he’s got a bigger plan and he’s got all of our plans in line. Like I said, I’m mad at Blaise for not being smarter. He didn’t have a head restraint on to my knowledge. I’m not saying it would have saved his life, but it sure would have helped his opportunities.”
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Jeff Green
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Sure it would have. So why wouldn’t a driver wear a restraint device? Isn’t it a no-brainer? To find out, I posed that question to Tony Stewart, the lone solider remaining on the Winston Cup circuit who doesn’t utilize a head restraint system.
“I think there are pros and cons to the HANS device,” Stewart said. “We know what it does in a forward impact, but what about a rearward or side impact? At the same time, I'm very proud of what Dr. (Robert) Hubbard has started. He's really started a wave in the way people look at driver safety from a head injury standpoint. We've got to start somewhere, and I think the HANS device is a good start.
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Tony Stewart
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“But from my standpoint, I'm trying to look at what he's done and take it a step further to see if I can get the cons taken care of and make it better. No one in the safety industry is really competing against one another. They're all just working together as a whole to make this sport a safer sport for everyone.”
Fair enough, but shouldn’t NASCAR be proactive like CART and mandate them? Although NASCAR president Mike Helton said last weekend at Charlotte that it’s being contemplated, they can’t mandate them just yet. Why you ask? Here’s a hypothetical:
What would happen if a driver, wearing a NASCAR-mandated head restraint, slammed the wall head-on and lived, but during the crash his brain hit the front of his skull so hard he was rendered a lifeless vegetable for the rest of his life? What then?
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Mike Helton
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The brain is suspended in fluid, encapsulated by the skull. There is no device that can stop the brain’s movement, even if a restraint device stops the head.
“We have learned from medical experts that the human body is not designed to withstand sudden stops, and that’s why we’ve got to be so careful in what we mandate,” said Jim Hunter, NASCAR vice president for corporate communications.
“There are some things you absolutely cannot prevent, no matter what. It would be great if we could make this sport bulletproof from serious injury or death. To date, we have been unable to do that. There’s inherent dangers associated with this sport. One guy is too many. But there are some things that just cannot be prevented.”
It’s coming though, is it not? Moving forward, mandating of the HANS or some other type of head restraint seems to be a necessary step for overall driver safety.
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Jim Hunter
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“I think in lieu of what’s happened in that area, as the guys have become more aware of what a head and neck restraint can do, I think you’ll see it mandated in the future,” Hunter said. “I don’t know how soon. I think that’ll happen. I think you’ll see some other mandates as far as safety is concerned.
“But in the long run, even with mandates, we’re going to have to leave the driver the latitude to where he’s still comfortable in that environment of the cockpit. That is key. So we’ll have to balance that with safety. We’re not going to compromise safety, we’ve got to make sure that whatever we mandate they’ll feel more safe than they would without it.”
One other major issue raised this season in the driver safety realm deals with chassis rigidity, or crushability, and how energy is dissipated in a crash. Much effort is being put into finding a way to force that energy away from the driver. New ideas such as the Humpy Bumper are solid steps in that direction, but may not be the end all.
The Humpy Bumper, a composite bumper created by Humpy Wheeler, president of Lowe’s Motor Speedway - the same track where Alexander died -- and Paul Lew, a Las Vegas-based composite materials engineer designer and manufacturer, is designed to absorb the energy of 20 to 30-degree frontal impacts.
“The Humpy Bumper deal, that’s cool, that makes the front stiffer,” said Michael Waltrip. “It gives something else to collapse before you get into the engine and all the other things. But one thing we don’t need to forget about , the scariest wreck in NASCAR since the beginning of time has been the T-bone.
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Michael Waltrip
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“If somebody talked about a T-bone 20 years ago it’d make you cringe. So when you put a Humpy Bumper on the front of a racecar and it hits another guy, it’s just gonna hit that much harder. It’s not gonna crush as easily.
“Hitting a wall, it’s great because the wall doesn’t give. But when you hit another car with that bumper, that’s not great. I think Humpy Bumpers are a wonderful idea, but I think it needs to be put in the driver’s side door. That would provide protection for a wreck like Steve Park’s. Steve is very lucky to be here today.”
At present, there’s no room for such a device in the driver’s side door. The driver, frame rails and sheet metal are a crammed together like the layers of a cake. Burton sees that as a major safety issue.
“Whenever I’ve gotten done wrecking and I look at my car everything’s bent all to hell,” Burton said. “You can’t hit anybody anymore because this stuff will bend. So if we’re gonna build a car that takes more energy, we’ve got to build it stiffer.
“When I look at cars today, certainly if went to Petty’s shop and looked at one of his cars, he had two fire extinguishers between him and his door bars. The cars are too small now.”
Obviously, there is still so much to be learned and implemented to assure the safety of our drivers, but they don’t race scared. They’re a unique breed, a breed capable of totally focusing on the task at hand. They still feel safe out there, and, ultimately, it’s their decision to make whether or not they strap into that car or not.
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Jeff Burton
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“If I didn’t feel like something was being done, if I didn’t feel that NASCAR was out there trying to make things better, if I didn’t feel comfortable with what’s going on, I wouldn’t have come (to the track) this morning,” Burton said.
“Can we do things better than we are currently? Certainly we can. This new aggressive attitude for safety is a baby, it’s just in its infancy, but we’re in a helluva lot different spot this year than we were this time last year. On this new agenda, we’re just getting going, so I see progress. If I didn’t, I’d be disheartened and it would make it harder to do what it is that I do.”
Still, in my mind a glaring question remains, why are so many drivers dying now? What’s so different these days than in the past. They weren’t dying then. Why now?
I wish I had an answer, but I don’t. No one really knows the answer to that question. Basilar skull fractures are not a new phenomenon. Driver deaths aren’t either, but with five in the past 17 months, I fear the NASCAR community is becoming accustomed to it.
We can’t be getting used to this. Please tell me we’re not.
NOTE: Marty Smith's column appears weekly on NASCAR.com and the opinions listed here are those solely of the writer. To provide feedback to Marty, write him at marty.smith@turner.com.
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