The events unfold slowly, in exact detail, a perfect panorama of color and speed. By now, we know it frame-by-fame — the black car bending to the right, the climb up the banking, the inevitable impact and the out-of-control slide back down into the grass. But the collision itself, that actual clash of concrete and metal, happened blindingly fast — 80 milliseconds from 160 mph to zero, according to the final accident report. It seems ludicrous that an entire decade could turn on one incomprehensibly small unit of time. But not if that decade is the 2000s, and that fraction of a second is the one that took the life of Dale Earnhardt. So much about today’s NASCAR has been shaped by that terrible afternoon of Feb. 18, 2001, a dark day that was the epicenter of a larger safety crisis that wracked the sport for the better part of three years. Earnhardt’s fatal crash — preceded by those of Adam Petty, Kenny Irwin, and Tony Roper, and followed by devastating accidents involving Jeff Purvis, Steve Park and Jerry Nadeau — forced NASCAR to upgrade its safety standards, and did away with the antiquated notion that “implied risk” meant it was OK for drivers to die.
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