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Pleased, but not satisfied Belt maker Simpson wants to be absolved by NASCAR
Updated: Saturday August 11, 2001 8:51 AM
By Mike Fish, CNNSI.com ATLANTA -- Embattled safety equipment manufacturer Bill Simpson is pleased that Dale Earnhardt's fatal skull fracture won't be blamed on a seat belt made by his former company, but he won't be satisfied unless NASCAR explains what caused the belt to fail. Simpson reiterated Friday that he also wants NASCAR to absolve the company he founded of any wrongdoing in the Feb. 18 crash at the Daytona 500 that claimed Earnhardt's life. The Orlando Sentinel reported Friday that the NASCAR report will essentially confirm the findings of the court-appointed expert who determined Earnhardt died of a sudden head-whip action, and that the seat belt, even if it hadn't broken, would not have prevented the fatal injury. The report is due to be released Aug. 21.
NASCAR officials declined to discuss the findings of the investigation until releasing them in full later this month. "I haven't seen the official report, but that is fine if they say the seat belt wasn't a factor," Simpson said from his home in Indianapolis. "They still came forward and said the seat belt was broken. If they're going to continue to refer to a broken seat belt, then I want to know why it was broken. Or why it was separated. "None of us know for certain what is in the NASCAR investigation. Nobody knows what the conclusion is going to be. It is only a lot of people speculating and hearsay. I don't want to feed that fire. But again, if there is a seat-belt separation, and that is obviously what they're contending, then why was there a seat-belt separation. There is cause and effect, you know." Simpson remains critical of NASCAR, believing his company was made a scapegoat in the wake of Earnhardt's death. He resigned a management position with his company last month. And while continuing to insist of no plans to sue NASCAR, Simpson still awaits something of an apology.
"Absolution by them would be better than an apology. Yeah, they do owe me an apology. They absolutely do, in a big way." Simpson said he retained experts who turned over two separate reports Thursday to NASCAR attorneys in Washington. One is the work of Charles R. Manning Jr. and David C. McCandless, authorities on reconstructing accidents, and the other from a leading safety-belt expert, Bill Muzzy of New Orleans. Because of a confidentiality agreement with NASCAR, Simpson said he wouldn't make the reports available until NASCAR releases its findings. "I'll tell you they are favorable to us," he said. Simpson also was not surprised to learn NASCAR's investigation confirmed his belief that cars have lack sufficient crush resistance in the front end, and he expects a move to remedy the problem. "I'm sure it is going to lead to some positive changes," he said. "I'm quite positive they'll lean on guys in the garage area for some answers, and those guys will come forth with some answers. "I have the front end of a car over in Mooresville, N.C., with a crushable structure and I know Humpy Wheeler has the Humpy Bumper thing, and there's also work being done with crushable aluminum honeycomb. Hopefully, there'll be a lot of positive stuff come from this." The details reported Friday, though, caught few by surprise in the racing community. It had been widely accepted that the belt failure was not a factor in Earnhardt's death, particularly after Dr. Barry Myers, a court-appointed expert from Duke University, viewed autopsy photos and concluded that Earnhardt suffered a skull fracture when his head whipped forward. And there'd also been considerable talk of the need to better absorb the energy from frontal crashes. "It's pretty much what I expected," said Dr. Steve Olvey, CART's medical director and neurosurgeon at the University of Miami's Medical Center. "It's what we've been fairly certain of for quite some time." Olvey is optimistic the findings will help bring less rigid cars to NASCAR. "One of the important factors in protecting the occupant is to have as much energy of a crash absorbed before it reaches the occupant," Olvey said. "So the more rigid the car is, or the more rigid the structure is surrounding the driver, the more of that energy gets transmitted to the driver. So if you can have zones collapse and absorb energy, or crumble and absorb energy, that's energy that doesn't reach the driver. And it lessens the results of an impact. "The example I use is if you put a 2-by-4 against somebody's head. It's doesn't matter how long it is, if you hit the other end with a hammer you're going to have a significant head injury and maybe kill the guy. But if you put some type of energy absorbing material between the 2-by-4 and the guy's head, you may get away hitting the other end with a hammer and not hurt the person. That is what automakers are doing now. You'll hear them talk about crumble zones in cars. That is the reason they're doing it." And it's why NASCAR may now call for a redesign of its race cars.
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