Dr. John Melvin at a safety seminar during the Long Beach Grand Prix weekend in April of 2014. Photo from sector111.blogspot.com

Dr. John Melvin worked for General Motors for 40 years as a biomedical scientist for automobile safety until he retired in 1998. By that time Melvin had already been working on his passion, making racing safer. From 1992 till his passing on July 17, 2014, Melvin worked exclusively on racing safety. It’s fair to say that no one knew that discipline better then Dr. Melvin. 

Hired by NASCAR as a Technical Consultant for racecar safety, Melvin did more to bring about changes in racing safety, especially in NASCAR racing, than any other time in the sport’s history. 

Most of these revolutionary changes in racecar restraints came after Dale Earnhardt’s death in 2001 at the Daytona 500 event. Dr. Melvin was brought in by NASCAR to investigate the crash and help improve racing safety.

As a result of Melvin’s investigation and recommendations, NASCAR’s improvements in head-and-neck restraints, seat padding and seat construction, driver restraints, SAFER barriers and the “Car of Tomorrow” have been implemented. 

When asked if those things had been in place when Earnhardt had crashed, would he have survived that last-lap crash?

“Oh yeah. There’s no doubt,” he said. “We know the severity of that crash was not all that great compared to some others we’ve seen. We’ll never know for sure that exact amount of the impact because we didn’t have crash recorders in the cars then, but some crashes since then have been much more severe with a good outcome.”

Dr. Melvin never tired of spreading the message of driver safety. Here he is talking with ARCA members in 2014, to help get the word out. Dr Melvin is on the far right, wearing the hat. Photo from www.arcaracing.com

“Without any changes, drivers would still be dying in NASCAR,” he once claimed. “But I don’t think we’d be seeing NASCAR right now, quite frankly. I think Congress would have gotten involved at some point.”

NASCAR President Mike Helton released a statement this morning about the passing of John Melvin: 

The racing community mourns the loss of safety pioneer Dr. John Melvin. Photo from www.stand21.com

“NASCAR and the entire motorsports industry lost a giant on Thursday with the passing of Dr. John Melvin. Dr. Melvin was a pioneer in the field of driver safety, particularly in the area of driver restraint systems. His many contributions as a safety consultant to NASCAR for more than 13 years forever changed the sport. We lost a colleague, and a friend.”

“NASCAR extends its condolences to Dr. Melvin’s family and friends. He will be greatly missed by the entire racing community.”

Melvin, a former University of Michigan professor and senior research engineer with General Motors and paid consultant to NASCAR and most of the world’s major racing series, was an internationally renowned scientist and regarded as a pioneer in driver safety and restraint systems.