In his report, he wrote that Earnhardt's injuries reflected a very severe high-speed crash that resulted when he lost control of his race car, swerved first to his left and then to his right, and then slid up the track into the concrete wall. The collision threw Earnhardt's body in the same direction as the impact, hurling his head and neck toward the concrete wall. His head whipped forward and downward in a circular arc while the seat belt held his body in place against the seat. In crashes like Mr. Earnhardt's, these inertial forces alone can be large enough to produce ring fractures of the skull base. When the skull cracks this way, it shears major blood vessels and damages the brain stem, which controls such basic bodily functions as breathing.
Death can come instantly.
Causes of death narrowed Examination of Earnhardt's fracture helped Myers rule out several theories on how the driver died. For example, he determined that Earnhardt had not cracked his skull by striking the top of his helmet against the roll cage of his car. If that had happened, Myers wrote, the edges of the fracture would have been compressed downward. And Earnhardt would have suffered obvious neck injuries, which he did not. He also dismissed the idea that Earnhardt died as his head whipped backward against the seat or roll cage.