"That surprises me," said Dr. Steve Olvey, a motorsports safety expert who is director of the neuroscience intensive care unit at the University of Miami's Jackson Memorial Hospital. "There's so much information out there now with regards to safety. It seems inexcusable not to do something about it."
The study also found:
While large oval tracks and superspeedways cut their deaths from at least 24 to at least 10 in the past decade, small tracks continue to account for half of all racing deaths - at least 121 deaths since 2001, up slightly from at least 115 the decade before.
Drag racing has had the biggest increase in deaths, jumping from at least 42 deaths in the decade before 2001 to at least 58 since. In 2010, at least seven people died at drag races.
2010 was the deadliest year for spectator deaths since at least 1990. Of at least 22 people who died last year, 10 were spectators - including eight killed in a California off-road race in August when a driver took a jump at high speed and rolled his truck sideways into a group of onlookers in the Mojave Desert.
At least six people have died at N.C. tracks in the last decade, including one last year. Terry McDougald, 52, died May 16 after being struck by the engine from a drag racer that had crashed into a guardrail at Harrells Raceway after reaching about 130 mph.
There has been improvement: In the past five years, an average of 18 people a year have died at U.S. races, down from higher numbers at the beginning of the decade. There were 40 in 2001 alone, the year an Observer investigation revealed that racing deaths were more common than many in the racing community believed. Before then, no one kept track of racing fatalities.
That 2001 investigation showed that patterns of fatalities revealed broad flaws in racing safety, including substandard gear and facilities from the top levels of racing on down. Since then, many top divisions including NASCAR have mandated head-and-neck restraints for their drivers.
But at the smallest tracks across the U.S., drivers largely make their own choices about safety - as they always have.
"Until safety is taken seriously and made mandatory by someone," said Olvey, "it still tends to be an afterthought."
Delaying safety
The accident began in Turn 13, the last and the slowest of the turns at Nelson Ledges Road Course in Ohio. It was July 5, 2010, the third day of the Sports Car Club of America's Northeast Ohio Double Nationals, and John Metzger's open-cockpit C Sport Racer was fighting for position with two other cars.
Metzger already had qualified for a later race, but he wanted to use the race to get better acquainted with his car, which he bought before the season started. As the three cars came out of the right turn, the car below Metzger's accelerated toward the straightaway, where safety worker Pete Sedlak was watching.
"The car went in front (of Metzger's)," Sedlak remembered in an interview this month. "The rear wheel pinched up into him. He started fishtailing."
An investigation later showed that Metzger's car was traveling 57 mph when it rammed through a barrier of tires and into a straightaway wall. "When we got to the scene, the accelerator was still open," Sedlak said. He also saw that Metzger was gravely injured, and that he was not wearing a HANS device.
Seven months before, the SCCA board of directors voted to require the use of head-and-neck restraint devices in its races, but the mandate does not take effect until January 2012. Metzger, a vice president of a West Virginia coal company, died the day after his wreck. He was 55.
"If he'd had a HANS collar, he would've lived," Sedlak said.
The death illustrates the safety challenges facing smaller tracks and racing bodies such as the SCCA, which has seen fatalities at its events increase in the past 10 years. From 1991 to 2001, 12 people were killed at SCCA events. In the past 10 years, 16 people have died, including two spectators.
President Jeff Dahnert said the SCCA has put an increased emphasis on safety since he took over two years ago. Along with the upcoming HANS mandate, the SCCA has increased the training and number of track inspectors across the country.
The two-year delay in the head-and-neck restraint devices, he said, was "to give members some time."
But Sedlak said he believes the SCCA shouldn't wait. "It's ridiculous to not mandate it now. If a driver is worried about money, he shouldn't be driving."
HANS devices, which cost about $1,500 in 2001, now cost $645 for the version that fits most cars racing at small tracks, said Jim Downing, co-founder of HANS Performance Products. That's hundreds of dollars less than a set of standard Goodyear racing tires for a short track car.
Downing said sales of HANS devices have doubled in the past 10 years to about 6,000 annually in the United States. Short-track drivers, however, remain the hardest sell.
"Drivers don't spook," said Tom Gideon, director of safety, research and development at NASCAR's R&D Center in Concord. "Race car drivers don't expect to wreck and die. The bottom line is, if you want it to happen, you have to put it in a rule book."
That's what the National Hot Rod Association is doing - albeit a year from now. A 2012 mandate will require drivers at all levels to wear head-and-neck restraint devices if they drive a car that can complete a race in 7.49 seconds or less. Drivers at NHRA's top levels already are required to wear the restraints.
NHRA President Jerry Archambeault, who expects the change to affect up to 6,000 drivers nationwide, said that NHRA mandates are applicable to all NHRA-sanctioned tracks, even smaller tracks across the U.S.
Enforcement is an issue, however. "You can't be physically present on site at every single track," he said. "On a weekday race on a Wednesday night, we might not know if they checked (for safety)."
Also, officials say, both drivers and tracks can simply decide that being part of a sanctioned race isn't worth the trouble. "You're always going to have challenges mandating things as you move down the racing food chain," said Mike Fisher, managing director of the R&D Center. "Participants can go up the road 50 miles to a race that doesn't have those restrictions."
NHRA tragedies
Susan Zimmer was in the pit area at Firebird International Raceway in Phoenix last February when Antron Brown began a run at the National Hot Rod Association's Arizona Nationals event.
Zimmer, a dental assistant and race fan from Wisconsin, was visiting her son and friends. Reports would later say she didn't see Brown's Top Fuel dragster shake severely as it accelerated, breaking the wheel studs and sending a tire flying. The tire struck Zimmer as she was walking to get a sandwich. She was 52.
"When I heard that happened, I dropped to my knees," Brown told reporters later. "I have to learn how to deal with that for the rest of my life."
Zimmer's death was the fourth in NHRA's Full Throttle Series, drag racing's highest level, in the past decade. In the previous 10 years, one driver - Blaine Johnson in 1996 - was killed in a Full Throttle race. Another Full Throttle driver, Jimmy Nix, died in an unsanctioned match race in 1994.
The NHRA also has seen at least 11 drivers die in lower-division races in the past decade.
"The unknown is still out there, and there are still a lot of things we have to learn," said John Force, the sport's biggest star and an outspoken safety advocate. "But it's unfortunate that sometimes we learn by trial and error and the mistakes we make along the way."
Three of the deaths since 2001 - drivers Eric Medlen in 2007, Scott Kalitta in 2008 and Zimmer - prompted immediate safety measures in NHRA, which makes two stops each year at zMax Dragway in Concord.
Changes included reinforcing roll cages and cockpits to Funny Cars; shortening races; adding crash-data boxes; placing wall sensors past the finish line that shut off the engine and deploy the parachute if the driver doesn't; and strengthening lug nuts and bolts to keep wheels and tires from flying off.
The NHRA also makes several safety improvements each year, Archambeault said, including an improved fire suit for Top Fuel drivers and increased head padding for many top- and lower-division drivers in 2011.
The NHRA has looked outside its community to Ford and the University of Nebraska for help with safety initiatives. NHRA doesn't have a research and development center similar to NASCAR's. Officials say the different kinds of vehicles that compete at the sport's highest level - dragsters, Funny Cars, street stock cars and motorcycles - make having a single research facility impractical.
"It does complicate the process," said Dan Kmiec, a Ford safety engineer who is working with the NHRA on safety. "A lot of what you work on with safety is obviously based on the structure of the car. It's not easy to take what you learn from a Funny Car to a dragster or a motorcycle. You need to understand each environment and how the systems need to be modified for each platform."
To that end, the organization is moving its tech center from California to Indianapolis, where most of its teams are located.
"It's a movement in that (R&D) direction," said Glen Gray, the NHRA's vice president of technical operations. "There are people in Indy who are involved with safety and facilities where we can do more testing."
Culture shift
What else can improve racing safety? Education, officials say, and time.
"It's the same way we did it at the upper levels," said Fisher at the NASCAR R&D Center. "You've got to educate people. These aren't secrets anymore."
Fisher said that's already happening throughout racing. The R&D Center shares its research throughout the different levels of NASCAR, as well as with other racing sanctioning bodies. "We're all smart enough to realize we all live in a pretty big glass house," Fisher said. "What is their problem today may be our problem tomorrow."
Officials say they hope change also will come naturally as young racers come into a sport that has changed its perspective on safety. Although NASCAR's older drivers struggled initially with initiatives such as the HANS device, a driver like 20-year-old Joey Logano knows only of racing with better safety equipment. Recent initiatives in the SCCA and NHRA also will become second nature, officials say they hope, and the culture those initiatives promote could eventually trickle down to smaller tracks and the drivers who race on them.
"The danger potential in racing has been very real to drivers my age," said Jordan Anderson, 19, who wears a HANS device as he races short tracks across the Carolinas, including Carolina Speedway in Gastonia. "We grew up hearing about the deaths of drivers like Earnhardt, Kenny Irwin, Blaise Alexander and Adam Petty, so that really brought that to our attention. We've got all this technology and awareness, so we need to take advantage of it."
"It is improving," said SCCA president Dahnert. "You see old pictures of spectators sitting on hay bales, and you think: 'How did they ever think that was a good idea?'"
For others, the will to be safer will come the same way as it did for NASCAR in 2001 - with the death of a colleague shaking them into change. "We know we don't want to go through what we've been through in the past," said Ramsey Poston, NASCAR's managing director of corporate communications.
But without that incentive, the choice isn't always so clear. John Metzger considered a HANS device, said his wife, D.J., at their home in Cross Lane, W.Va. "We talked about safety a lot," she said. "Racing scares these guys - at least if you're smart or a family man."
John was both. He had an adult son, Craig, and a young granddaughter. Craig was his crew chief. They worked together on cars in the three-stall garage at the house, and they traveled across the country to race at the SCCA National level on weekends.
John had been racing 35 years - motorcycles, Corvettes and, most recently, the C Sport Racer in SCCA races. Last year, John purchased a HANS device, his wife said. But he was a stocky guy, and when he tried it out in his small race car, he had difficulty seeing his controls.
Downing, the HANS co-founder, said that he also drives C Sport Racers, and drivers of all sizes wear his device in those cars.
D.J. Metzger said John thought he had two bad choices - wear the device and lose some visibility inside his car, or risk safety by going with a simple neck collar. He left the HANS device in his trailer.
"Would it have saved his life?" she said. "Probably."
