Amid sport's safest period, the risk never goes away (cont'd)

Contact from Reutimann sent Rudd's car spinning, and he hit the wall flush on the driver's side. According to some reports, he was briefly knocked out. His Head and Neck Support (HANS) device, designed to keep the head from whipping forward in a crash, wedged under a part of his seat headrest, yanking his left shoulder out of the socket. He came to Richmond this weekend with his left arm in a sling. Given that he plans to retire after this season, there's an outside chance he may never compete again. Still, he feels lucky.

"An injury like this, I'm not too tore up about it. I'm very happy that a shoulder injury is the only thing that I'm having to deal with," he said. "It could be a severe head injury, considering the way the wreck was and the way these cars are designed. They've got one major inherent design flaw, and that's that the driver sits way too close to the left side of the car. His head is very vulnerable in an accident like that, so all the safety devices and everything worked great."

Fortunately, Rudd's car builders at Robert Yates Racing slid his seat a little to the right when they were constructing his California car, a decision that might have saved him from a more severe injury. That's standard in the Car of Tomorrow, where the seat is moved more toward the middle of the car, dramatically reducing the chance in a left-side collision that a driver's head will make contact with the wall. But the COT doesn't go full-time until next year.

"Basically, when the wreck happened, it threw me into the left-side door cage and threw me toward the wall," Rudd said. "Again, that clearance you have between your helmet and the wall on these current cars, you're talking about when you're all stretched out, probably less than an inch of head clearance between you and the wall. Whereas with the COT, for example, it's probably a foot. That's probably the only thing I can see right now that needs an immediate band-aid on it. I know there are only five races left in these (non-COT) cars, but that's the only thing I can say."

We've come a long way from the time, not too long ago, when the first drivers to wear HANS devices were ridiculed by their peers. The quantum leap NASCAR has made in terms of safety could be seen in another wreck at California, Brad Keselowski's fiery, grinding, wall-climbing crash, which occurred when the Busch driver was turned toward the wall in a manner similar to the way Rudd was. Rescue workers pulled him out of his mangled car and carted him away on a stretcher (watch video). But he hit the SAFER barrier, and he raced again Friday night at Richmond.

Not everyone is as fortunate. At racing's lower levels, where a HANS device is an expensive luxury and SAFER barriers rarely exist, fatal accidents like the one last month that killed NASCAR modified driver John Blewett still occur. Even in a series like Nextel Cup, where drivers are wrapped in a protective cocoon of unprecedented strength, danger can seek out and expose the weak points. Even as drivers continue to walk away from accidents that might have been disabling just a few years ago, the search for new and better safety advances continues. NASCAR is in the midst of the safest period in its long history. But as Ricky Rudd proves, enough is never enough.