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« on: July 26, 2012, 11:34:13 AM »
As a racer, family friend, chassis builder and friend of all racers, Denny is doing good and is at Wilson Memorial hospital. He is somewhat back to himself as a nurse had asked "How fast were you going when you crashed?". His reply was " not fast enough cause I was running 2nd". That was AWESOME to hear and that's so Denny! I will start with this, from the 40's - 80's, racing was dangerous! Safety has become more advanced but still has risks that we ALL take! This is what I've learned from this horrible crash. Rumors are flying and as a chassis builder, I needed to see what failed or what didn't. The car is at (Kurt Decker's) Denny's cousins house. Matt Hayes, Kurt and myself disassembled the car and analized it. A lot of people were saying that it crushed down 6-8". It didn't come down that far but some what yes. What we did find in our observation was that it did come down and move to the right side, which rolling that hard would do. The number one thing that I saw was that Denny's head was too close to the top of the cage/roof and as the cage came down and over to the right, exposed his head/helmet causing his injuries.
In the state of New Jersey, there is a rule which is in my mind a VERY important one. With the driver in the car, helmet on they measure from cage to helmet. It needs to be a minimum of 3". When I introduced the new Nitro street stock a lot of people said "that thing is too tall". I build my cars with safety first, so with my cages being taller helps with this sort of crash. My IMCA is the same way. 4-5" of head room. Take a look at your cars. Lower the seats. Take the precautions not to put your body in harms way. From 4 cylinders to DIRT mods, keeping the driver away from the cage gives him or her the best chance of escaping injury. It's sad to say it takes bad crashes to make drivers safer!!!. If we just put our crashed race cars in a field or a garage somewhere, we would not know how to make them better. So that is why we have taken the time to make EVERYONE aware of what went wrong and allows us to make changes for safer racing. All of us racers are a BIG FAMILY and all stick together. And I appreciate anyone taking the time to read this....PLEASE NO BASHING ON THIS POST!!!!!! It is meant to help and make the racers safer!!!!!
Thank you,
Joel Batzel
Nitro Fabrication