NASCAR Is Owed A Major Apology

NASCAR didn’t knuckle under to the safety
overkill crusade.

Of course, from reading such pieces as Gil
Lebreton at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Bob
Lipper of Media General News Service, and Ben
Blake this fact is supposed to be worth mourning.

Lebreton keeps asking, "Do they
really know what happened in that fatal instant on February 18?" They may
not know to the most microscopic detail, but deducing what happened isn’t as
impossibly difficult as Lebreton’s question makes it appear. Lebreton seemed to
sneer at the belt breakage angle, though to his credit he did not dispute it
factually.

This is one of the angles that gets to the
– I use the term for wont of a better one – conspiracy mongers. They still cling
to Dr. Barry Myers’ autopsy photo examination and his conclusion that head whip
alone caused the fatal basilar skull fracture – never mind that the autopsy
itself concluded that blunt force trauma was responsible, and the notion that
head whip alone causes skull fractures without impact has never been plausible,
especially considering that Earnhardt struck the steering wheel hard enough to
contort it rather seriously.

"The panelists drew no conclusions
about what effect softer, collision absorbing walls could have had on the
accident," Lebreton writes. Based on such soft-wall failures as in the 1998
IROC at Indy and in New Hampshire testing, one can confidently conclude the
effect would have been zero.

Dr. James Raddin, asked if a HANS collar
would have saved his life, said he didn’t have enough data. Actually his
demonstration of how Earnhardt slammed the steering wheel showed a head
restraint would not have done any good.

The other angle that galls the conspiracy
buffs is that NASCAR won’t implement the pet projects they have pushed – crash
boxes will be installed in 2002 but not before. The advocates still have not
made a convincing argument about how more technology will help at a time when
electronic scoring and other telemetry failures are common.

"The HANS collar should be
mandatory." Why? Helmet restraints could never have saved Earnhardt (the
display of graphics ought to have made that unassailably clear), Adam Petty,
Kenny Irwin, or Tony Roper any more than they made any difference with Ward
Burton at Fontana or Mike Skinner at Chicago. Maybe Jimmy Spencer and Tony
Stewart should be telling their fellow drivers that head restraints are
seriously oversold instead of their fellow drivers pressuring them to wear them
– certainly Dale Junior shouldn’t have knuckled under.

"The implementation of
shock-absorbing walls also needs to become a priority. Why are the walls at
stock car races made of concrete, anyway?" Shock-absorbing walls have
proven an illusion of safety rather than a contributor, and concrete is used so
cars do not crash into grandstands; Armco used to be used but multiple deaths
and some horrific injuries – like Reds Kagle, who lost a leg at Charlotte in
1961 after spearing the Armco in Three – ultimately ended the practice.

"NASCAR needs to mandate softer, more
collapsible hood areas that absorb impacts." Except data provided at the
report’s release suggested that chassis rigidity was at most a peripheral
contributor to the fatality; also, Ray Dunlap of ESPN demonstrated how the
speeds of the cars rather than the stiffness per se of the chassis has more to
do with the present safety problems – Doug Gore in Speedway Illustrated delves
into that area more in depth and he partly agrees with this aspect.

In his piece, Bob Lipper likewise derides
what NASCAR won’t do now – he ignores that belt installation isn’t as big a
contributor to the dumping process that broke Earnhardt’s belt as some make it
out to be – the videotape of the belt being dumped certainly suggested method of
installation is not as relevant as one might think. NASCAR will have a medical liaison
who will work with in-place track medical staffs – "but not honor drivers’
wishes and put in place a full-time traveling medical staff." Ben Blake is
particularly nasty when he says that NASCAR "is ‘in the process of hiring a
qualified person to serve as a full-time liaison’ with the local yokels who
currently man track medical centers."

Scott Pruett made the same point on ESPN,
and as usual none of these advocates have to my knowledge ever cited one
instance where NASCAR’s approach to medical staffs has in any way been
deficient. All they say is that the traveling staff knows the drivers well, etc.
as if the in-place track staffs are somehow alien to drivers. The argument in
favor of a traveling medical staff remains unimpressive, assuming as it does
that racetracks are somehow incapable of providing qualified personnel. Ben
Blake’s use of the term local yokels is particularly intemperate and insulting
as Winston Cup track medical teams are every bit as capable as the traveling
medical squads used by open wheel bodies.

Lipper’s piece repeats the tautology about
how NASCAR does not have a full-time medical or safety staff while CART and IRL
do – and as always, such forgets the lack of difference in casualties between
the two forms of racing.

And it boils down to that NASCAR is owed a
huge apology by its critics. It did exactly what it said it would do, and its
report, while certainly containing some areas one can legitimately disagree
with, nonetheless takes on the relevant issues and effectively counters the
propaganda pushed by such venomous types as the Orlando Sentinel – which pulled
a monstrous hoax with its story based on "leaks" that the Earnhardt
report would be a NASCAR mea culpa rather than the solid rebuttal to safety
hysteria that it is.

The Sentinel in particular owes NASCAR a
huge apology because its entire safety campaign has been wrongheaded and little
more than a vicious attack on NASCAR. The use of the long-discredited Tom Propst
angle was an especially repellent tactic, intended to attack NASCAR’s entire
credibility as well as play on reader emotion, and it fails at both. Indeed, one
may have to start asking if Propst was ever sincere to begin with.

Ed Hinton, of course, has led the
Sentinel’s campaign – the same Ed Hinton who smeared Michael and Sandra Andretti
in a July 1993 Sports Illustrated piece, who slandered the IRL after the 1999
tragedy at Charlotte, and who was on CNNSI before the release of the Earnhardt
report arrogantly predicting "a new NASCAR" as if the old one was
somehow responsible for the four deaths in its three top divisions during the
2000-1 timeline. One is reminded that IMS refused to issue Hinton credentials
over his slanderous SI piece in ’99; I hope NASCAR revokes Hinton’s credentials
over this.

The report noted no single cause of his
death, which ought to have been understood even before it was released. But it
does offer some solid answers and that really should be enough. If it doesn’t
satisfy everyone, then the sport has to accept that and move on.