Crumple zones are a standard safety feature in modern vehicles. Upon impact, your car is designed to crush, mangle, and deform itself in a controlled manner. It absorbs the energy of the crash upon itself, rather than transferring the energy into what’s referred to as “the safety cell,” aka you. Béla Barényi, dubbed by Mercedes Benz as “the lifesaver,” engineered the first crumple zones on an automobile. Mercedes said at the time, “Manufacturers carefully avoided using the term [safety]…nobody wanted to be reminded about the dangers of driving. The topic was viewed as a sales killer.”
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But Barényi was ahead of his time when he recognized that the kinetic energy of a crash could be dissipated by the controlled deformation of the vehicle. That it would buy the two most important things needed: time and space between you and your crash. It buys fractions of a second as the hood crumples, before the most dangerous part, when the car stops and your head flies forward and back again. If you’re lucky, you’ll sprain your neck, but if you’re not, you’ll break it, or suffer what’s called a basilar fracture, a break at the base of the skull.
*
In 2014 I was a field organizer for the California Democratic Party, assigned to a Southern California representative’s reelection campaign. Over the course of four months, working seven-day weeks, I had one day off in order to move from Hollywood to Ojai, a mountain town north of Los Angeles. Driving through those mountains of Ojai became my favorite part of those tiring days. In the morning driving down the mountain, the road would open up at the ocean and drop out onto the 101. Reflections of sun scattered out in every direction, gleaming off of the Pacific and new Teslas.
On the way back up at night, the long roads got narrower and darker, and turns got sharper. Every evening, as I was usually the only one on those roads, I’d imagine myself clocking lap times, outpacing myself from the night before, impressing my imaginary pit crew. They’d come over the radio in my ear and say things like, nice, nice. I improved my speed and anticipated turns. I pushed myself to be better, smoother.
I think about what he saw, and about what he heard, and I wonder if growing accustomed to it is the only way to make it out alive.
Election night finally came. The campaign put us up in a hotel so we could celebrate together, but after a long, sobering evening, there was no news. We all got knocks on our doors at three in the morning and were told that we were expected at the Ventura County Courthouse by eight; the campaign was too close to call. One night during that sleep-deprived week that followed, on my familiar drive home, as I approached a sharp left turn that hugged the side of the mountain, I fell asleep. My first car, a silver 2011 Honda Insight, went airborne off the side of the road and was stopped head-on by a tree, at which point it did exactly what it was supposed to do: It crumpled. The various lightweight metals, each placed specifically according to density, engineered like origami, acted as a buffer between the tree, the engine, and me.
When I came to, I quickly became aware of a burn on my hand from the airbag. I saw that directly in front of me was a huge tree and that my front hood had been forced up vertically and was now at eye-level. I swiveled to take in my surroundings, but the box of campaign flyers in my trunk had exploded, wedging papers into all of the window seals and completely blacking out all four side windows. Away from any lights of the road, it felt like there was nothing left for there to be seen at all, that the world had gone out from around me. After the confusion faded and the dozens of printouts of my candidate’s face came into focus, I pushed my door open and made the climb back up to the road.
When my father was driving his car, the commodity of safety just wasn’t as attractive; it wasn’t what was selling cars. He was driving one of those classic cars, the ones built tough with American steel, that wouldn’t bat a lash at any ol’ fender bender, or any ol’ tree for that matter. When he was young, testing the limits of his car, driving fast, cutting close turns, and kicking up dust on a red dirt road in Alabama, he crashed head-on into a tree. My dad’s hood didn’t crumple, though. It, along with the car’s engine, stayed intact and shot straight back into the “safety cell,” a.k.a. him. After his crash, my father spent three months in the hospital. He doesn’t remember the day leading up to the crash. His legs were broken. There was glass shattered into his body. He survived, though, and was able to go on to have a daughter, who would get to go on and have the same crash as him.
*
It is impossible for me to recall my father without thinking about a few specific things. First and foremost, it’s a Miller Lite and Marlboro in the same hand, with the ash getting long.
It’s him in the garage that became his cave, surrounded by framed pictures of the different planes he worked on in the Navy, models of NASCAR cars, the classic orange Wheaties box with Richard Petty on the front, and the photograph of his dad, Jack Sr., who was a submarine man in the Navy, leaning shirtless against his red sports car. I think of the blue Volkswagen van without back seats he used to drive. I think of lying down in the back, dramatically rolling from side to side, hitting the walls and laughing as he drove around. I think of the sad beater he drove after he sold the van. We called it The Egg. He grew up all over this country, but home was on a red dirt road in Chunchula, Alabama. Chunchula is not a town. It is not a village. It is a “census-designated place.” My whole life, every Christmas, summer, and spring break, we made our way down to Chunchula and up the hill, miles away from the nearest pavement. When I think of my father, of his crash and of mine, what I’ve started to think of are the lyrics to Brooks & Dunn’s 2003 single “Red Dirt Road.”
Brooks & Dunn entered the scene in 1991, the year I was born, with their debut album Brand New Man. It featured the tracks “Neon Moon,” a poetic ballad about finding lonesome solace in the soft, hazy glow of your local dive, and “Boot Scootin’ Boogie,” a dosey doe anthem that puts square dancing at the center of Southern watering hole culture. For over two decades to follow, Brooks & Dunn released hit after hit. Their music isn’t just woven into the fabric of modern country, it’s the dye that soaked the fabric, the indigo in the Levi’s that still fit.
“Red Dirt Road,” the title track of their eighth studio album, has been stuck in my head, looping over and over again. The song starts off with a steady, paced rhythm on the guitar, like the tail of a film reel that’s left spinning, tapping on the projector long after the movie is over. A light mandolin sprinkles in, and Ronnie Dunn sings, I was raised off Rural Route 3, out past where the blacktop ends…
*
It wasn’t my first beer, but it was my first time drinking liquor. It was the Fourth of July, or maybe it was New Year’s. Whatever the occasion, it was the night my dad poured gasoline on the bonfire.
We were down at Paul Bear and Darlene’s house. The other kids and I stole a bottle of Jack Daniels off the plastic folding table that was being used as a bar and ran from the creek back up to the yard. We all got up on the trampoline and took turns swigging. I went first. With a mouthful of whiskey, I flung myself toward the edge of the trampoline and spit it into the grass, scraping my tongue with my fingers. It was disgusting, but it was dangerous. It was wild. I was eleven, and even though I didn’t drink it, I stole it.
After I recovered, I remember smiling in the darkness with the other kids as they all tried taking swigs, followed by gagging. It was the ultimate, here, smell this, a game usually played with the deer and bear urine guys carried with them while hunting. As the laughter quieted, the crickets and bullfrogs sang through the night. The stars were as bright as ever, and just a piece down the road toward the creek, the adults sang along to “Boot Scootin’ Boogie.”
I drove us home that night. I was just barely tall enough to see over the wheel and operate the pedals while standing. All I could see of the entire world was what was in the glow of those headlights, which quickly dampened out into thick trees. I ran over a bush, and it was the funniest, scariest, most exhilarating feeling. I wasn’t drunk; I was just eleven. I drove us up that red dirt road with the windows down, the adults in my life drunk and giddy in the back seat, and my seven-year-old brother riding shotgun. The next day, my dad was sitting still, drinking Miller Lite through a straw. His hands were wrapped in gauze. His brows and lashes and mustache were singed, and the skin on his face was blistered. He blew up the bonfire good.
*
There’s one road that brings you all the way up the hill. It’s a mixture of red clay and sand, the same as all the rest of the earth around you. It’s mostly prefabs and double-wides, with a few minutes of space in between. There was one boy on the road who always bragged about how one day his daddy would brick them a house. The trees are dense pines, and the needles that fall and encase the ground are the closest thing to sidewalk. If the rain washed out the road, my grandpa’d be out there with his tractor, fixing it up again.
There was one trailer in particular that we always passed on our way up the road. In the yard, they had the Alabama state flag and a Confederate flag on proper flag poles, with a giant white cross between the two. If it weren’t for the fact that NASCAR was missing, I’d nearly say it was the Alabama Holy Trinity out front that trailer. We’ve entered, I’d think to myself as we made our way up the hill. It wasn’t when the air got thick and sweaty, heavy with the South and the Gulf. It wasn’t when we turned off the blacktop pavement. It was when we passed that trailer that it felt like we were signing a contract. Abandon all that city livin’, ye who enter here.
I cannot stress enough the power that NASCAR wielded over the average Southern family when I was growing up. It wasn’t just families as spectators either; it was families inside the sport. NASCAR is built on Jr.’s, Sr.’s, and III’s. Sons of dynasties taking up their call to drive.
Part of a dynasty himself, Richard Petty was the King that inspired an incomparable era of drivers, with the likes of Dale Earnhardt leading the way. Dale Earnhardt, the son of a driver and the father of two more, according to credible sources, was a literal god among men. Next to my dad’s unopened Richard Petty Wheaties box was an unopened Dale Earnhardt Wheaties box.
*
In 2001, approaching the final turn of the final lap of the Daytona 500, Dale Earnhardt was set to come confidently in third place. His teammates Michael Waltrip and Dale Earnhardt Jr. were just ahead of him, and he was blocking the drivers behind him from passing. He held deliberately steadfast in third, guarding his son and his friend from everything behind them. The Daytona 500 is a big deal. We were all watching. I, along with seventeen million other people, saw it all play out live.
In the final turn of the final lap, Dale Earnhardt slid off course. In those last seconds of the race, as Waltrip and Jr. approached the finish line, he over-corrected, causing him to cross back in a U-turn up the track and shoot straight into the retaining wall, hitting it head-on at 155 miles an hour. Six seconds later, as his smoking car slid slowly back down the bank of the track, his friend and his son crossed the finish line, claiming their Daytona victories. The announcers and the crowd went wild, but only for those few seconds, before they realized what had happened.
Dale Earnhardt died instantly in that crash. It was blunt force trauma and a basilar skull fracture. When his death was officially announced two hours later, I was still sitting in the same seat that I was in at the time of the crash, a La-Z-Boy in my friend’s living room. It was the first time I heard a grown man cry, her father. I heard him wail from behind the closed door of his bedroom upstairs as my eyes went out of focus in front of the TV.
Dale Earnhardt was the fourth NASCAR driver that year to die of a basilar skull fracture. Specifically, the fourth to die in the past nine months. The other drivers were Tony Roper, whose cause of death was technically classified as a severe neck injury; Kenny Irwin Jr.; and Adam Petty, grandson of Richard Petty. You know, from the Wheaties box. All three were sons of drivers, whose fathers passed down their names and trades. All three were sons of drivers, whose fathers buried them with broken necks.
After the high-profile nature of Dale’s crash, though, attention immediately shifted toward safety and head and neck support (HANS) devices. The HANS device is shaped similarly to the inflatable life vests you see on an airline, or the letter U. Its arms reach down and rest on the driver’s chest. Its base sits on the shoulders and extends upward behind the helmet. Two small straps, each anchored to the sides of the helmet, attach to the base behind the driver’s head. Without a HANS device, upon head-on collision, the energy on the driver’s body is stopped from moving forward by safety belts. The head, however, shoots forward, stopped only by the length of the neck before whipping back again. The HANS device is the head’s safety belt. The head and neck never extend beyond a natural point.
I think about his crash and mine, and sometimes I wonder if they really ever were the same, or if I just want them to be.
Before his death, before HANS devices became mandatory, Dale Earnhardt was among the drivers who actively spoke out against wearing one, even after all those younger drivers had died. He said it was restrictive and uncomfortable. He referred to it as a noose. When I think about him saying that, I think about what he was chasing after. About what he wanted most. About what he wanted more.
The next year, a group of engineers led by Dean L. Sicking implemented the Steel and Foam Energy Reduction (SAFER) barrier. The SAFER barrier is designed to “absorb and reduce kinetic energy during the impact of a high-speed crash, and thus, lessen injuries sustained to drivers and spectators.” They turned the walls of every oval track in the league into crumple zones. Not a single NASCAR driver has died in a cup race since that final lap of the 2001 Daytona 500.
*
At the time of Dale Earnhardt’s death, my father was where he was for a lot of my memories: deployed with the Navy. His first deployment within my lifetime was when I was three years old, less than twenty-four hours after my brother was born. On September 11, 2001, just seven months after Dale Earnhardt died, you can find aerial footage of my father’s aircraft carrier, the USS Enterprise, making a U-turn in the Indian Ocean. They were on their way home after a four-month deployment when news of that day reached their ship, and without orders to do so, they turned back around.
In the commemorative DVD of that deployment, which my brother and I used to watch over and over again, it becoming a stand-in for the presence of our father even after he had returned, the U-turn takes place as the haunting, steady war drum of Disturbed’s “Down with the Sickness” begins to play. The guitar comes in, and as Disturbed’s vocalist David Draiman puts it, “it just made me feel like an animal,” and he lets out a visceral, throaty cry. This song had been an anthem of my angsty adolescence, an angst that had cultivated itself in my father’s absence. An angst that made me feel alive. Then Draiman’s scream drops in sync with the video cutting to night-vision scenes of bombs being dropped over Afghanistan. Over and over again. I think about my brother and I sitting in the glow of the TV screen. I think about what we grew accustomed to seeing.
In those three additional unplanned weeks spent in the Arabian Sea, where they were the first military presence to arrive, fresh with raw 9/11 vengeance, they carried out 660 missions and dropped over 800,000 pounds of ordnance over Afghanistan. There wasn’t much sleep to be had in those weeks, and my dad wasn’t the only one to come back different. I think about what he saw, and about what he heard, and I wonder if growing accustomed to it is the only way to make it out alive, even if no longer intact. He doesn’t talk about it. It tore my family apart. I remember, in the wake of it all, the divorce, the confusion, the hurt; I remember thinking that it would have been easier if my dad had just died over there. That it would have been a clean cut. Not this mangled, crumpled mess.
*
Elbert Dysart Botts was a Midwestern chemist who got recruited to the California Department of Transportation. He went on to conduct the humble research of identifying the best shapes and textures to use for raised pavement markers on highways and arterial roads. They were placed along lanes’ edges to act as an auditory aid when drowsy drivers drift off course. Botts didn’t know he’d be remembered by little dots guiding us safely home at night. Bott’s dots weren’t widely spread, or even called Bott’s dots, until after Botts had passed away in 1962.
After Béla Barényi, Mercedes’s “lifesaver,” lost his father in World War I, after his family lost everything they had in the Depression, and without fear of the word safety, Barényi went on to develop the crumple zone.
Dale Jr. raced cars with his dad, and at his dad’s memorial tribute concert, Brooks & Dunn debuted a new song called “Red Dirt Road.”
The first time I drove a car, my dad was in the back seat laughing at the fact that his children were the ones up front while cursing at the blisters that had begun to form on his hands.
When I think about my father, I think about a Miller Lite and a Marlboro in the same hand. I think about Brooks & Dunn and NASCAR and the Navy, and I try not to think too much about the times I wished he was dead. I think about his crash and mine, and sometimes I wonder if they really ever were the same, or if I just want them to be. I think about the lines that run down both of his legs. The opalescent scar tissue that runs from his thighs, over his knees, and down to his shins. His legs were opened by that crash of his on that red dirt road, and then they were stapled back together again. You can see where each individual staple was, like bright little Bott’s dots along two parallel roads.
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Winner of the 2024 James A. Winn Prize in Nonfiction, “Red Dirt Road, A Crumple Zone” by Sara Mitchell is published in Michigan Quarterly Review 64:1, the Winter 2025 issue.
