EARNHARDT HEAD INJURY DETAILED IN REPORT – Sun Sentinel
Seat-belt failure did not cause the head injuries that killed NASCAR great Dale Earnhardt during February’s Daytona 500, a court-appointed medical expert who studied the racer’s autopsy photos reported Monday.
Dr. Barry Myers, a Duke University expert in crash injuries, said the nation’s most popular stock car driver died when his head whipped violently forward in the moments after his No. 3 Chevrolet struck a concrete wall at 150 mph.
Rejecting NASCAR’s theory of the crash, Myers said that, even assuming what he termed “a worst case scenario,” Earnhardt’s head probably would have suffered the same damage even if his lap belt had not torn on impact.
“As such,” Myers wrote, “the restraint failure does not appear to have played a role in Mr. Earnhardt’s fatal injury.”
Myers’ five-page report was the culmination of an agreement reached last month between the Orlando Sentinel and Teresa Earnhardt, the racer’s widow. He was asked to evaluate whether Earnhardt’s basilar skull fracture resulted from his head whipping forward, a blow on the top of the head or — as NASCAR had suggested, a broken seat belt that allowed the driver to strike his head on the steering wheel.
In his findings, Myers sided with other racing and medical experts who told the Orlando Sentinel that Earnhardt likely died because his head and neck were not held securely in place.
Although Earnhardt’s chin struck the steering wheel hard enough to bend it, Myers said he thought the racer succumbed to the sudden, wrenching forces that can kill anyone whose head is not restrained in a high-speed frontal crash.
Dr. Philip Villanueva, a University of Miami neurosurgeon originally hired by the paper to study the Earnhardt case, said he had reached the same conclusion as Myers from the autopsy report. But he wanted to examine the autopsy photos to be certain.
“My conclusion was that the patient definitely died of a whip injury and that the breaking seat belt did not significantly contribute to the patient’s death,” Villanueva said.
Dr. Steve Olvey, medical director for Championship Auto Racing Teams for the past 22 years who has done extensive research into crashes, also agreed with Myers’ findings.
“I think it’s very similar to what’s happened to other drivers in those type of cars,” said Olvey, also a University of Miami doctor.
Myers stopped short of saying that better head-and-neck protection would have saved Earnhardt. But he said such a device had the potential to prevent these injuries, which have claimed the lives of as many as five NASCAR drivers in the past 11 months.
Myers’ report, which proposed further study of head protection for NASCAR drivers, came only hours after the racing organization announced it had commissioned its own experts to reconstruct Earnhardt’s accident.
“Everyone involved in this process is committed to a sense of urgency, but we must also move forward in a thorough, careful and complete manner,” said a statement by NASCAR president Mike Helton. NASCAR had no comment on Myers’ report, which was released later Monday afternoon.
Earnhardt, a seven-time Winston Cup champion, crashed on the final turn of the Daytona 500 on Feb. 18 and could not be revived. In a news conference five days later, NASCAR officials announced that a seat belt had broken in Earnhardt’s car.
Daytona International Speedway Dr. Steve Bohannon, who worked on Earnhardt after the crash, said he thought the faulty belt allowed Earnhardt’s head to strike the steering wheel of his Chevrolet. He speculated that the force of the blow cracked the base of Earnhardt’s skull and caused massive head injuries.
The Orlando Sentinel went to court to gain access to Earnhardt’s autopsy photos after his wife persuaded a Volusia County judge to seal them. The newspaper, which vowed not to print the photos, sought permission for a medical expert to evaluate the pictures to see if better safety equipment might have saved the racer’s life and to evaluate NASCAR’s seat-belt theory.
Although the court challenge outraged NASCAR fans and prompted state lawmakers to remove autopsy photos from the list of Florida’s public records, it produced a settlement allowing Myers, an independent medical expert, to see the photos. His selection was agreed to by both sides.
Myers, an expert in head and neck injuries, reviewed the photos for about 30 minutes at the Volusia County Medical Examiner’s Office on March 26. In his report, he wrote that Earnhardt’s injuries reflected a very severe high-speed crash that resulted when he lost control of his speeding racecar and swerved first to his left and then to his right, sliding up the race 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 seatbelt held his body in place against the seat.
“This is the basis of the whip mechanism which occurs in right side angled frontal collision,” Myers wrote. “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 body functions as breathing. Death can come instantly.
Examination of Earnhardt’s fracture helped Myers rule out several theories on how the driverdied.
For example, he determined that Earnhardt had not cracked his skull striking the top of his helmet against the roll cage of his car.
He also dismissed the idea that Earnhardt died as his head whipped backwards against the seat or roll cage.
What killed Earnhardt, Myers concluded, was the weight of his unrestrained head whipping forward beyond the ability of his neck muscles to keep it from snapping away the base of the skull.
The analysis appeared to exonerate Simpson Performance Products, the maker of Earnhardt’s seatbelt. NASCAR has said that the lap belt on Earnhardt’s left side failed, though no one outside the racing organization has acknowledged seeing the belt after the wreck.
While NASCAR officials publicly speculated that the seatbelt contributed to or caused Earnhardt’s death, Myers ruled that out as a significant factor.
Seat belt maker Bill Simpson called the report “the best news I’ve heard in seven weeks. I’ve been living in daily hell,” he said, his voice choking with emotion.
Teresa Earnhardt’s lawyer, Thom Rumberger, said the report helped provide more answers in the death. But he maintained that the report does not state that viewing the autopsy photos was crucial to Myers’ investigation.
Rumberger also blasted the Orlando Sentinel and the Sun-Sentinel for filing a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the newly passed law restricting access to autopsy photos.
The newspapers filed suit against the law on March 30, one day after it was signed into law by Gov. Jeb Bush.