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CNN Saturday Morning News

Recent Deaths Fuel NASCAR Safety Debate

Aired July 07, 2001 - 09:14   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PHILLIPS: Tonight NASCAR goes racing at Daytona, and for the first time since the Daytona 500 in February, that's when racing legend Dale Earnhart was killed.

Here's CNN's "Sports Illustrated" John Giannone on the safety debate.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOHN GIANNONE, CNN-SPORTS ILLUSTRATED (voice-over): Adam Petty, Kenny Irwin, Tony Roper, Dale Earnhart, four deaths in NASCAR in the last 14 months, the common bond, a basal skull fracture. Since Earnhart's accident four and a half months ago, NASCAR has encouraged drivers to consider head and neck restraint devices, most notably the HANS. More than 75 percent of drivers now wear some device, compared to one-quarter of the field in February's Daytona 500.

MICHAEL WALTRIP, 2001 DAYTONA 500 WINNER: That's what we're all addressing with our cars, you know, with our seats, trying to limit the distance that the head can travel when you do stop suddenly, and put nets in and all this stuff.

STEVE PARK, WINSTON CUP DRIVER: And now the drivers -- I mean, the drivers are working together where, you know, before it was almost taboo to go look closely at someone's race car and the inside of their race car. Now you find the drivers saying, Hey, man, I found something that really works great, come over here and take a look at it.

GIANNONE: This week, NASCAR mandated an alteration that is the direct result of head and neck safety devices, calling for a minimum 17-inch-high driver's window that will accommodate a quick exit while wearing a device. However, NASCAR still won't mandate the device itself.

MIKE HELTON, NASCAR PRESIDENT: The developers of the HANS device, Dr. Harbert (ph) and Jim Downey (ph), we've had conversations with them, and they're reluctant in us mandating it until they can understand better the universal use of it in a stock car, which is much different than in an open wheel.

GIANNONE: NASCAR continues to differ from other racing series in several areas of safety. The CART series has a medical director and safety team that travels to each event and a catalog of accident and injury statistics that date to 1982.

DR. STEVE OLVEY, CART MEDICAL DIRECTOR: When we saw that there were trends, like, for example, when we had a lot of foot and ankle injuries, we would go to the designers and the car manufacturers and our technical people and come up with modifications to prevent those injuries.

GIANNONE: However, NASCAR still prefers a more decentralized approach, contracting with local physicians at each track on the circuit.

HELTON: If it made sense to have a single person that was a constant element in this chain of activity, then it's worth looking at. And it may happen.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: The experts, the doctors, that should be paying attention to our guys at the race track, are the local ones who have the best local knowledge.

GIANNONE: Another difference is data collection. CART installs black box crash recorders in each vehicle. NASCAR, which doesn't allow data to be fed back from its race cars, frowns on black boxes.

HELTON: The microchips and the line that goes along with the data recorders gives us some heartburn.

GIANNONE: Unlike CART and other major sanctioning bodies, NASCAR is not a member of the safety-oriented International Council of Motor Sports Sciences. But instead of keeping it in-house, NASCAR did utilize independent experts to assist in its closely guarded investigation into Earnhart's crash.

HELTON: We don't publicize or make public all that we do and all that we are working on and all the steps that we're taking and all the different conversations that we have about safety. But I know they're widespread, they're very broad. And it encompasses a lot of resources.

RICHARD PETTY, SEVEN-TIME WINSTON CUP CHAMPION: Any time you fix one problem, you usually dig up another problem or two. So you've got to go through the whole complexity of whatever the situation is, because one thing's not going to solve anything.

GIANNONE: As with everything in NASCAR, time is of the essence because everyone agrees the cost already has been too steep.

I'm John Gianone.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PHILLIPS: Let's get another perspective on NASCAR's safety issue. Larry Webster of "Car and Driver" magazine joins me now from Detroit with his thoughts on the issue.

Good to see you, Larry.

LARRY WEBSTER, "CAR AND DRIVER" MAGAZINE: Thank you, good to see you too.

PHILLIPS: Hey, before we delve into the safety issues, let's sort of talk about this bittersweet time right now and take a minute to talk about what's happening at the Speedway, conversations going on. Dale Earnhart, I would imagine, is on a lot of people's minds.

WEBSTER: Oh, absolutely, he's on everybody's mind. And I think it's probably kind of eerie for the drivers to go back to the track where he died, because if you remember, Earnhart died on the last lap, and sort of the race was over, and the news kind of filtered in a little while after the race ended that he had passed away.

So I think to be back there and to really fully know that he has died is probably quite upsetting for a lot of them.

PHILLIPS: Any specific changes that have been made to that track? John touched on a few things in his piece. But do you know specifically of anything that they've made a point to do?

WEBSTER: No, not at this time. The HANS device, which they spoke about, is the head and neck restraint system, is still optional for the drivers to wear, and more of them are wearing it, but it has not been mandated. As far as the track itself, it's the same track it was when Earnhart crashed, and there haven't been any changes to it to make it safer.

PHILLIPS: Does that surprise you?

WEBSTER: I think it does. To me, it's very surprising. That track, it was built about 50 years ago, and if you think about it, 50 years ago we didn't even have seat belts in cars. And we've learned a lot since then, and to me, that track's a dinosaur. I mean, it's two and a half miles. The banking's 31 degrees, which is so steep you can barely walk on it, which means the cars can go very fast around that track.

I mean, if they did not restrict the engines at this race, these cars could go well over 200 miles an hour. So they restrict the engines, all the cars have the same amount of horsepower. The drivers go around the track with their foot on the floor the whole time. They do not brake. So effectively, they have -- they've lost one of their tools to control the car.

So you get these really tightly bunched packs, an accident happens, it's not just two cars, it's 20 cars. And everyone knows the big one's going to happen. It's just a matter of when.

PHILLIPS: Explain to me, too, the concrete wall. I understand that was done more for the safety of those sitting in the stands, correct? But it's not a really -- it's not a safe thing for the drivers.

WEBSTER: Well, the concrete wall is the silliest part of the whole thing, if you ask me, because it doesn't move. And the big thing you want to do in an accident is absorb the energy. And these cars have a lot of energy because they're traveling so fast. And the car absorbs some of it, but the wall absorbs none of it, because it doesn't move.

Now, to NASCAR's credit, that wall has evolved from no wall to wood to metal to now concrete, and a lot of that's been done to protect -- to stop debris from bouncing over the wall and harming spectators, which has happened in the past.

But on the other hand, to me, there has been not enough development of a wall that can not only protect the spectators but absorb some of that impact. I mean, that sport makes a lot of money. To me, there's no reason they can't come up with a system that would absorb some of the crash energy and protect these drivers a little better.

PHILLIPS: What would be the first thing that you would change, Larry, if you had the opportunity to do to change the Speedway?

WEBSTER: The Speedway, I mean, the first thing I would change is obviously I would investigate all the soft-wall options that are currently out there and see if I could develop one that would work properly. Because it's a tricky -- it's not so easy just to make a wall that absorbs. You -- the wall has to absorb, but it can't hold the car in at the same time. It has to move or allow the car to slide along it.

And then it also has to be easily repaired, or it has to bounce back into shape very quickly so the race can go on. So I'd make that change.

The other change I would probably make is, I would make the point system less -- Right now, drivers -- it's advantageous to them to finish the race even if their car is half wrecked. I mean, they still get points if they're running at the end and if they've completed a certain number of laps.

If you just said, OK, only the top 15 finishers are going to get points, then the 15 to 40 finishers don't get any points, which means if they get in a wreck, they just park it. You know, now there's, like, an incentive to make the car stiff enough so that if it hits the wall, it can still continue. And that stiffness in the car contributes to driver injuries, because you want the car to fold and bend during the accident to absorb all the energy.

PHILLIPS: Larry Webster with "Car and Driver" magazine, great insight this morning. I'm -- we'll all be watching the race.

WEBSTER: Yes, let's hope it's a clean one. Thank you.

PHILLIPS: There you go. Thanks, Larry.

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