My Ongoing Tribute to the Greatest NASCAR Driver Ever

Dale Earnhardt

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I'd fail Crash Dynamics 101

By Marty Smith, Turner Sports Interactive
August 23, 2001
10:32 AM EDT (1432 GMT)

COMMENTARY

Had “The Dynamics of Dale Earnhardt’s Fatal Crash” been a required course for graduation at Radford University, I would currently be a seventh-year senior.

As I sat in the pristine conference room at the downtown Hyatt Regency in Atlanta Tuesday listening to two of the most celebrated crash test experts in the world discuss the intricacies of Black Sunday at Daytona, I had recurring flashbacks of a miserable semester spent gurgling through the murky waters of Calculus 101.

These guys may as well have been speaking Spanish, man. From the ins and outs of kinematics, to loading to dumping to velocity vector, I was receiving a warp-speed lesson in Newton’s First Law of Physics from the guys in gym class with the hiked up shorts and taped up eyeglasses.

The nerds always get the last laugh, folks. Why? They don’t need pictures to bring vast mathematical equations to life. I do.

That’s where I give NASCAR the most credit in their explanation of the investigation. They actually showed us what happened to Earnhardt, they didn’t just tell us. They came equipped with extremely detailed photography; charts, video clips and computer re-creations of the accident, making the hieroglyphics on the overhead projector come to life in a comprehensible fashion.

It was quite impressive, and extremely informative for the engineering-ignorant media such as myself. Still, there is no question that my only dabbling in forensic science will be relegated to watching "The New Detectives" on the Discovery Channel.

When the hour-long presentation ended, NASCAR handed out a two-volume copy of the report to the media. It’s thicker than the Los Angeles Yellow Pages with a Beverly Hills appendix. So, 24 hours later, here I sit, a novelesque accident report strewn all over the desk in front of me and still no freakin’ idea what I’m looking at.

Sure, it’s written well, and in clear detail, but the sheer volume of information is mind-boggling.

How these gentlemen -- James H. Raddin, Jr., M.D. and Dean L. Sicking, Ph. D. -- started with a mangled car and a few angles of the crash on videotape, and reconstructed every conceivable mathematical aspect of the crash blows my mind.

These dudes are smart -- REAL smart -- and are to be commended for their hard work over the past six months. Their tireless efforts have helped bring more closure to one of the worst tragedies in NASCAR history -- despite the fact that in all actuality they didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already suspect.

Leaving the conference, the major question rumbling through the media room dealt with why NASCAR didn’t give more in-depth analysis of its plans for achieving better driver safety in the future. Heading in, rumors ran rampant that various changes would be made to the cars, crushable chassis and “black box” data recording systems among them.

NASCAR president Mike Helton did say the sanctioning body plans to mandate the crash data recording boxes, but there was no mention of any changes to the actual construction of the cars whatsoever. Ninety-nine percent of the press conference dealt with Earnhardt’s crash and an in-depth look at why it killed him.

I will never totally understand all this stuff. Unless of course, someone creates Cliff's Notes.

NOTE: Marty Smith is a staff writer for NASCAR.com and the opinions listed here are solely those of the writer. If you wish to provide feedback to Marty, you can do so by writing him at marty.smith@turner.com.