15 Scary Indy 500 Crashes That Shook Race Fans

Although the oldest race in the Triple Crown of Motorsport, the Indianapolis 500, keeps up many of its time-honored traditions, it has also evolved a great deal since its origin in 1911. It's always contested as a 200-lap, 500-mile race. The 33 drivers line up in 11 rows of three, and so on. Yet of course the cars themselves have advanced with the times, so much so that Hélio Castroneves's 2021 record time of 2:37:19 (190.7mph average speed) is more than four hours and 100mph on average faster than the original 1911 winning time of 6:42:08 (via Indianapolis Motor Speedway). 

However, on the whole, the racers' speeds increased, but the number of driver fatalities from crashes has plummeted. The last one to date occurred in 1996 when a tire blowout on pole-winner Scott Brayton's practice run car caused it to clash with the outer wall. As per the Daily News, the car spun and skidded out of control more than 1000 total feet before and after the collision, which killed Brayton with massive head injuries. 

Horrible crashes, some of them listed here, often catalyzed new racing safety rules, such as requiring screening tests for rookie drivers in 1935 or the installation of the SAFER Barrier at the Speedway in 2002. Racers were required to wear seat belts in 1954, but Indy 500 driver Barney Oldfield first ordered an experimental safety harness from a parachute company in 1922, setting an example for racers to be ahead of the curve.

Note: The following embedded videos show violent Indy 500 crashes, some of which resulted in the loss of human life. They may be disturbing to certain viewers, so please watch at your own discretion. 

Two crashes and three gruesome fatalities marred the 1933 Indy 500. The first occurred when Mark Billman hit the outside wall during his 79th lap and was pinned between the wall and his car's front left wheel. The crash broke both his legs and ripped his left arm entirely off, in addition to internal injuries. Blood transfusions did not save him; he died about an hour later. Billman's riding mechanic Elmer Lombard sustained lacerations and burns, but survived the ordeal.

Soon after the first accident, while making a turn, Malcolm Fox unexpectedly swung out to the right, catching the passing Lester Spangler on the left rear end of his car. The contact caused Spangler's car to flip and spin several times before coming to rest against the inner wall. Spangler and his riding mechanic G.L. "Monk" Jordan were both killed. According to a contemporary report in Automotive Business Magazine, they were so disfigured that friends had trouble telling them apart.

This, however, was only the death toll on racing day. During qualifying, driver Bill Denver and his riding mechanic Bob Hurst also died in an accident, setting the tone for a particularly morbid event at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

Bill Vukovich was the best driver of the 1950s, according to Boston.com, winning the Indy 500 in both 1953 and 1954. The end of his racing career and life at age 36 came from being caught up in a chain reaction of an accident after leading through 57 laps of the 1955 race. Then, an axle broke on Rodger Ward's car. After breaking to avoid a collision, Al Keller collided with Johnny Boyd. Coming up from behind and about to lap the cars ahead of him, Vukovich swerved right to avoid trouble, but could not help crashing into them. In a harrowing sequence, his car cartwheeled several times beyond the outside wall into the vicinity of onlookers, colliding with a jeep, a truck, and a passenger car, per Sports Illustrated, which blamed the tragedy on racing's culture of "suicidal nerve."

Vukovich had breathed his last, officially expiring due to a skull fracture. Ward, Boyd, and two fans were also injured. Vukovich missed his chance to win an unprecedented three consecutive Indy 500 races, but he did establish a record of leading the most laps in the Indy 500 for three straight years, which has stood the test of time, according to Autoweek.

Part of racing's royal family, Jerry Unser Jr. was the first Unser to compete in the Indy 500. His brother Al Unser is tied for the most event wins in history with four. Jerry's brother Bobby and nephew Al Unser Jr. have also won the prestigious race, while Jerry's son Johnny and nephew Robby were Indy 500 competitors as well. In 1958, Jerry Jr. entered his first Indy 500 and was part of the notorious 15-car pileup, where his car hurtled over the outside wall, and he walked away with a dislocated shoulder.

As fate would have it, Jerry did not even get the chance to compete in the 1959 race. During a practice run weeks before the event, he was coming out of the northwest turn at about 133mph when his car started to wiggle and then smacked the inside wall, caught fire, and spun into the outside wall. Unser was still conscious and speaking when the rescue crew reached him, according to the Spokane Spokesman-Review, but couldn't be removed until the fire was put out. He had a broken neck, but ESPN reports that he died at 26 years old from his burns two weeks later. The incident led to new regulations requiring fire-resistant racing suits.

David Earle "Swede" Savage Jr. led for 12 of the first 54 laps of the race, when in the 59th lap—just before regaining the lead—his car suddenly wavered and then careened hard left, crashing devastatingly into the inner wall. The Sarasota Herald-Tribune reports that the car had been fully loaded with fuel, and the resulting explosion vaulted debris high into the air, while what was left of the flaming car slid back toward the outside wall with the 26-year-old Savage still inside.

As service workers converged around the accident, fans began screaming as they witnessed a fire truck run into crew member Armando Teran, throwing him about 50 feet and killing him with fractures to the ribs and skull. After the accident, the sanctioning body USAC ruled that safety trucks could no longer drive in the opposite direction of the IndyCars, according to the book The Indy 500 by Ron Dorson.

Several weeks later in the hospital, Savage would succumb to complications from his injuries. The Bangor Daily News reported at the time that Savage had worn a safety suit equipped with fire-resistant foam that would have prevented many of his burn injuries, but he was unable to activate it after the crash.

During the second lap of a qualifying run, the back end of Gordon Smiley's IndyCar slid slightly to the right coming out of the third turn and going into the fourth turn. The 33-year-old driver tried to correct the error, but in overcorrecting the steering, the car turned sharply right and smashed headlong into the outer wall at around 200mph, causing a fiery explosion and a veritable disintegration of his car, according to the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. Smily died instantly—officially from massive head trauma. As detritus splayed across the track, the wreck broke into three major sections that tumbled hundreds of feet down the track with Smiley's lifeless body exposed to the qualifier's spectators.

Car owner Bob Fletcher told the Herald-Tribune that his crew saw nothing while examining the wreckage to suggest that something broken within the car caused the crash. To this day, Smiley's is the final driver fatality during an Indy 500 qualifying round.

During the 1991 practices, when coming out of the fourth turn, the back of Mark Dismore's IndyCar hit the outside barrier at 215mph, sending the car sliding into the pit lane attenuator. The car caught fire and shattered into countless pieces, while tumbling through the pits close to crew members and fuel tanks, according to Sports Illustrated.

The Beaver County Times reports surgeons needed six hours to work on Dismore's broken neck and multiple injuries to his feet, right knee, and right wrist, stabilizing him in good condition. Despite this terrifying setback, Dismore recovered and returned to racing. He competed in another eight Indy 500 races and stayed active behind the wheel until 2002, collecting six total race wins after this horrific accident, according to DriverDatabase.

British driver Mike Conway survived a harrowing airborne crash on the penultimate lap of the race. He and Ryan Hunter-Reay had been jockeying for position between turns three and four. But Hunter-Reay's car was running on fumes and began to falter. Approaching from the inside, Conway's left wheels had begun to touch the ground outside the track, but Conway could not avoid contact with the other racer. His right front wheel ran into the left front end of Hunter-Reay's car, sending Conway's IndyCar spinning airborne into the outer fence. It bounced off the fence, stripping off basically every part of the chassis where Conway remained.

Fortunately for Conway, while his car pirouetted in the air, the nose twisted just enough to avoid a head-on collision with the fence, and he escaped with his life and fractures to his back and left leg, according to The Guardian. Conway was able to return to racing in a matter of months, but he vowed not to race again on oval tracks.