NASCAR's New Rule for Drivers: "Don't Get Dead"

Cars kill. According to National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates, in the first quarter of 2014, 6,800 people were killed in car accidents. In the grim world of American traffic "safety," that counts as progress: in 2013, the first quarter saw 7,150 fatalities. Progress is being made: from 2005 to 2011, motor vehicle fatalities declined every year, from 43,510 "down" to 32,367. Pedestrian fatalities are, however, on the rise: up for the third consecutive year.

What happens when two tons of engineered metal impacts living flesh and bone probably doesn't occupy too many of your thoughts, unless you really enjoyed Crash or are a bicyclist or something. But last week, a car being driven in a game killed a man. Maybe you heard about it. Tony Stewart, former NASCAR champion, was racing on a dirt track. He "bumped cars" with a 20-year-old driver with a day job by the name of Kevin Ward, Jr. Ward's car spun out and his race was over. Presumably pissed off and wired-out-of-his-gourd on adrenaline, Ward walked out onto the track, pointing at Stewart's car. The car hit him, and showed with gruesome clarity what machines do to bodies.

After six days of reflection, NASCAR issued some new rules, accompanied by an opaque, jargon-larded statement. ESPN dutifully relayed the same, and their thoughtfully curated autoplaying videos played and played and played. Analyses of where Tony Stewart might be (with friends and family, which is a load off my mind, for sure) and whether he'll race again soon (gosh, we just don't know). Are these new rules good? They sure are. Are conflicts going to end? No, of course not: fans expect confrontation: we just want to make sure it's contained and good for the spectacle, not bad for it. The autoplaying-ads were mainly cheery "YAY, BASEBALL!" fodder or about fantasy football. I don't think Kevin Ward's name came up.

The new rule, Rule 9-16, is fairly long and detailed, with all the grace and clarity you'd expect from a committee tasked with crafting a compliance document that will get through legal review and efficiently cover all available asses (unless somebody goes out on the track again: that guy's ass is going to be grass).

"During an event, if a car is involved in an on-track incident and/or is stopped on or near the racing surface and unable to continue to make forward progress, unless extenuating emergency conditions exist with the car (i.e. fire, smoke in cockpit, etc.) the driver should take the following steps:"

The steps are basically "stay in the car, stay off the track." The last rule instructs the drivers still driving to hold their line and do what they're told. It doesn't tell those drivers to take care to avoid hitting anybody who's not in a car; maybe that's in another rule. Maybe NASCAR, like everybody else in America, thinks it doesn't need to be said, though the numbers certainly suggest otherwise.

The greasy weasel-speak of the rule, with its "on-track incidents," etc., finds its purest expression in the statement given by NASCAR vice president Robin Pemberton. Quoth he:

"Throughout the history of our sport, NASCAR has reviewed and analyzed situations and occurrences that take place not just in NASCAR racing but also throughout all motorsports and other sports."

Situations. Occurrences. History! Other sports. Certainly we all were struck by the situation and occurrence on that fateful day in 1972 when Cincinnati Royals point guard Tiny Archibald literally drove the lane, from within the plush confines of his cherished 1954 Buick Roadmaster, laying it in off the glass, killing four Boston Celtics, drawing the foul, and converting the free throw. NASCAR remembers these eventualities and the certainly reviewable and analyzable natures they unequivocally possess. So don't we all. Pemberton, still:

"Through time you have to recognize when you get a reminder or tap on the shoulder, something that may need to be addressed. This is one of those times where we look outside our sport and we look at other things, and we feel like it was time to address this."

Reminders. Taps on shoulders. Modalities of need, and externalities of sport. Other things. When a vice president squares his shoulders, looks you dead in the eye, then coughs lightly and looks down to read words like these off of a piece of paper, you feel the passion, the integrity, the deep accountability and moral center inherent in his every act. Obviously, the potent down-home nature of NASCAR has never been more alive.

Kevin Ward Jr.'s funeral was yesterday.

Follow Chris Collision on Twitter.