Death of Dale Earnhardt

Death Of Dale Earnhardt

Dale Earnhardt was an American race car driver who gained fame driving stock cars for NASCAR and winning seven championships. He won his first Daytona 500 in 1998. He was involved in a car accident during the last lap of the 2001 Daytona 500 at Daytona International Speedway on February 18, 2001. He was taken to Halifax Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead at 5:16 p.m, after sustaining blunt force trauma to the head. Earnhardt was 49 years old when he died. The event was highly publicized and generated intense interest from the media and resulted in various safety improvements in NASCAR auto racing.

Following Earnhardt's death and the subsequent investigation of the events leading to his death, NASCAR began an intensive focus on safety that has seen the organization mandate the use of head-and-neck restraints, oversee the installation of SAFER barriers at all oval tracks, set rigorous new inspection rules for seats and seat-belts, develop a roof-hatch escape system, and which eventually led to the development of a next-generation race car built with extra driver safety in mind: the Car of Tomorrow. Earnhardt had been the fourth driver to die in NASCAR competition within a year, beginning with Adam Petty's fatal crash in May 2000.