NASCAR and the rest of stock car racing have made sweeping changes to improve driver safety in the almost three years since Dale Earnhardt died at Daytona. Winston Cup drivers have all but abandoned open face helmets. Head-and-neck restraints are mandatory in NASCAR's top series, and data from "black boxes" recording impact loads are being used to design safer cars.
Yet America's most popular form of racing remains behind lesser known series when it comes to protecting its drivers. "I think a few years ago criticism may have been valid," says Gary Nelson, who heads NASCAR's research and development center. "I don't think that is true today, and we continue to improve safety in the series."
Despite Nelson's position and recent gains in NASCAR:* Rescue crews often lack training to deal with accidents and the unique construction of race cars.
* Drivers at some local bullrings race with little safety gear and, even in Winston Cup, are not required to use the best life-saving equipment available.
* National Stock Car racing-with its "not invented here" syndrome-remains slow to adopt or adapt proven safety measures from other series. It clings to tradition and "proven technology" that is often outdated. NASCAR falls back on time-consuming in-house research that often delays making changes that have already saved lives in other forms of racing.
The AttitudeRacing's prevailing attitude in this country toward safety begins with the waiver. Everyone signs one before they get a racing license or go through the back gate at any track in America. No one ever reads it, but they all know what it says: Racing's dangerous. You can die doing this for fun. Leave your lawyer at home. When someone gets hurt, racers shuffle their feet, shrug their shoulders, and mentally review the waiver they've never read.
"He knew it was dangerous when he got in the car," they tell one another. And they think it can't happen to them.
Then an icon dies and NASCAR racing gets "safety religion," after some intense media scrutiny and manufacturer pressure and education. Soft walls. Ignition cut-off switches. Helmets for the over-the-wall crew. The technology exists to make racing even safer, yet NASCAR and other stock car organizations are slow to embrace or require it.
"NASCAR doesn't make quick decisions," says team owner Eddie Wood, whose son Jon races in the Craftsman Truck Series. "It makes good decisions." Be that as it may, much of what NASCAR decided to do in recent years was already commonplace in open wheel series like CART and the Indy Racing League (IRL):
* The HANS device was developed more than a decade ago by Jim Downing, who first used it in IMSA sport cars.
* CART and the Indy Racing League have 10 years experience with crash data recorders (introduced with tech support by General Motors Racing), and working with both Ford and General Motors to study what happens inside a car during impact.
* The safety seats now showing up in stock cars mimic those developed for open wheel racing in the early-'90s.
Pressure From The Driver SeatToday the pressure is on NASCAR to take a more aggressive role in protecting drivers, and it is coming from inside the cars. For decades, Winston Cup drivers simply considered burns and broken bones as part of the cost of doing business. But last season some of them became unwilling to accept NASCAR's lack of speed when it comes to safety. They began speaking out on issues such as rescue workers apparently unfamiliar with the inside of a stock car, poor response time by medical technicians, and the dangers of sitting in a burning car in the middle of a track while cars race past them under the yellow flag.