Richard Petty’s Horrific Darlington Crash in 1970 Is the Reason for One of NASCAR’s Biggest Safety Inventions & Here’s How

NASCAR’s safety division learns from every bad incident on the race track and creates further protective measures for drivers. One such incident it learned a lot from was Richard “King” Petty’s crash at Darlington in 1970. All was good until Lap 176 of the Rebel 400, when Petty faced a steering failure in his No. 43 Plymouth.

He hit the outside wall and bounced back to the inside wall. Slamming into the frontstretch barrier nose first, the Plymouth flipped multiple times before coming to a halt. The track crew went silent for a moment at the sight of Petty’s limp body hanging from his seat and his hand outside the window before it rushed to his aid.

Streaks of red appeared around his car and shot up the anxiety. Fortunately, the reds were from the rag he used to keep in his mouth during races. He said years later, “At the time I used to run with a rag in my mouth. Well, them rags got to coming out the windows and stuff. It looked terrible.”

That wasn’t the end of the fiasco. A safety team member accidentally sprayed a fire extinguisher on the car, although there wasn’t any fire. So, Petty couldn’t be retrieved from the car immediately. When he was eventually taken out and sent to the hospital, the ambulance driver created fresh troubles. He did not know his way out of the facility.

Petty explained in 1992, “The cat driving didn’t know how to get out of the infield. He would have driven on the track if I hadn’t stopped him. He didn’t know about the tunnel under Turn 3 and didn’t know how to get to the hospital in Florence. Start to finish, it was quite a deal.”

The mandate that NASCAR introduced in the aftermath of the crash

The image of Petty’s arm hanging out of the window became hugely popular and inspired NASCAR to put forward a mandate that all cars must have window nets installed.

This used to be an optional addition earlier, but from that race in 1970, it became mandatory. Petty could’ve easily been thrown out of the car through the window, and the promotion wanted to prevent such mishaps.

Drivers are now told to lower their window nets after crashes to signify that they are uninjured. The number of drivers who’ve escaped fatal injuries because of the nets is quite a lot. Petty suffered a broken shoulder from the crash and missed the next five Grand National races. However, he quickly bounced back from the speedbump and ended up winning 18 races that season.