"Great minds really do think alike?"

On the topic of independent creation (which is a defense to a charge of copyright infringement, but NOT to patent infringement), note the interesting post in the subject area of NASCAR. The (thoughtful) poster 4ever3 had written something, but on checking the internet, found it was already there.

4ever3 had written:

Without a doubt the biggest NASCAR story this past decade has been the death of Dale Earnhardt.

Earnhardt's death changed the face of NASCAR and the effects are still being felt even 9 years later.

One can only speculate what NASCAR would be like now if Earnhardt had not crashed that fateful day in Feburary during the Daytona 500 in 2001, but I do know for sure that his death is the reason why some of the stories mentioned above are even stories.

SAFER Barriers, HANS Devices, the introduction of the CoT, and Dale Jr racing for Hendrick are good examples of the ripples still being felt in NASCAR after Earnhardt's death.

One would like to hope that some of these changes would have happened even if Earnhardt hadn't crashed, but let's be realistic this whole safety thing wasn't addressed after the deaths of Petty, Irwin, and others - it was only addressed in earnest after the death of NASCAR's superstar.

The other text (by David Caraviellois) a lot lengthier, and includes

But not if that decade is the 2000s, and that fraction of a second is the one that took the life of Dale Earnhardt. So much about today's NASCAR has been shaped by that terrible afternoon of Feb. 18, 2001, a dark day that was the epicenter of a larger safety crisis that wracked the sport for the better part of three years. Earnhardt's fatal crash -- preceded by those of Adam Petty, Kenny Irwin, and Tony Roper, and followed by devastating accidents involving Jeff Purvis, Steve Park and Jerry Nadeau -- forced NASCAR to upgrade its safety standards, and did away with the antiquated notion that "implied risk" meant it was OK for drivers to die.

Is (independently) considering the Dale Earnhardt story the top NASCAR story of the decade plagiarism? No. If the Caraviello story had been copied, without attribution, that would be plagiarism.

[In passing, LBE grew up in central Florida (Daytona not far away) and was familiar with the exploits of Junior Johnson, an inductee in the (first class) NASCAR Hall of Fame.)]