Is There to Much Comfort in NASCAR Safety?   May 2, 2008 Lisa Fowler - SCR   I recorded This Week in NASCAR and watched it the other night. Some things were mentioned about the pit crews standing on pit road after servicing the cars, to celebrate the stop. We saw in Sunday's race at Talladega, a crew member struck by a car that was pulling in. He had completed work on his car but continued to stand at the back of the pit box. We saw this happen last year when Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s jack man finished his work and stood there watching Earnhardt exit the pits as a car entering ran over the jack. Fortunately, no one was injured in either of these incidents. It made me wonder if the downside of all the safety improvements is that as humans we tend to become comfortable and that is when bad things can happen.     During Sunday's race, Darrell Waltrip stated several times that he thought the drivers were taking more risks, bump drafting in the corners and knocking each other out of the way. The COT is so much more stable than last year's car that it seems they can get loose yet manage to get straightened out and continue. Of course, we saw with Michael McDowell's qualifying crash at Texas, the cars can indeed get airborne.      We credit so much of the safety features to the death of Dale Earnhardt (who would have celebrated his 57th birthday earlier this week). His death shocked the racing world and made us take a much closer look at what could be done to protect the stars of the sport. There is no question that racing is safer now than it has ever been and I expect we will continue to see improvements. However, it seems that the more comfortable the drivers and crews become, the more risks they are willing to take.   Everyone saw Kyle Busch and Jamie McMurray get together in Sunday's race. What would have almost certainly turned into the Big One in the old style car, turned out to be just another highlight that has been played over and over on TV.  Does this reinforce in the minds of the drivers that they can get away with more than they once could?  Being the tough competitors that they are, drivers are going to push it to the limit no matter what.     I get as excited as anyone when I see a car wrecking and then I see the driver get it back under control and continue racing. Having so few cautions in the first half of the race Sunday was somewhat unusual for Talladega. I thought it made for a better race, on the track. I even heard some drivers say they could never remember having made a green flag stop at Talladega before. I think most of use prefer to see the race won on the track, not in the pits.     I still hope that the drivers and crews will go back and watch the race and pit stop footage and realize that there were many opportunities for accidents to happen, give thanks that they did not, and keep in their minds how fortunate they were to avoid those situations. I want to believe that everyone involved in the sport always has safety in mind. In reality, I know that during the race, all that anyone is thinking about is advancing their position and getting the best finish possible. The thing with safety is that we never think of it when everything goes well. We only think of safety when someone has been or could have been hurt. We tend to react instead of being proactive.   Advertise on StockCar Review, SCR has advertising rates starting as low as $12.00 per month. Email us at