The pit road incident in Homestead Sunday that left one NASCAR crew member hospitalized with serious head injuries rekindles a debate that has long raged not only in NASCAR, but across all forms of motorsports. How can crew members' margins of safety be increased?

NASCAR, CART and the IRL all have safety procedures in place that attempt to address the issue. CART is the only one that mandates helmets for its crew members, but helmets are not the cure-all that they appear to be.

The answer to what happened to Ricky Rudd's front tire changer, Bobby Burrell is not a helmet. It is a comprehensive remodeling of the entire pit environment.

While affording protection to one's head, they also reduce the peripheral vision and vision field for those who wear them. Crewmen who have tried the helmet (and some CART crew members) complain that these restrictions increase rather than decrease the margin for injury. Tire men are looking down at an angle while changing tires. The protruding jaw protection of a helmet reduces their vision making the task more difficult.

The workspace for individual crews is the root cause of most injuries on pit road. Each sanctioning body sets a minimum area for each individual pit box. Bordered lengthwise by pit road and pit wall, these boxes are stacked one after the other, and in the case of stock car racing provide minimal maneuvering room for cars to enter and exit. Imagine trying a 15 second pit stop on your passenger car wedged into a typical one car garage and you get a sense of just how confining the work area typically is.

The large NASCAR fields of 43 cars tax the logistics of most race track pit areas. Except for Bristol, which still employs a front and back pit area, and Sears Point, which has an extra pit area bordering the final turn of that serpentine course, tracks have shaved pit boxes in an effort to keep all the cars on one pit road.

Green flag pit stops exacerbate pit road safety. How many times have you heard TV-types preface a pit stop report with the cliché that one second shaved on a pit stop results in a commensurate advantage back on the track? The faster the lap speed, the bigger the gain from a quick stop. This puts a premium on a driver's in-lap and out-lap. So drivers must push the pre-set margins set by officials.

In this same race, Jeff Gordon made a pass while running on the "ring road" leading onto Homestead's pit area. A 45 mph speed limit was (as always is the case) in place, running the entire length of the pit service area where individual pits are located, but cars still jockey for advantage. Getting in and out results in congested bottlenecks where drivers attempt to gain any sort of advantage possible within the posted speed limit.

Close quarters, the need for quick action and a frenetic atmosphere is a recipe for disaster. In a sport where the slightest advantage can make a difference, team have always employed techniques that put safety on the edge.

In the early '80s I worked for Junior Johnson on Darrell Waltrip's pit crew and learned first hand some of the tricks of the trade. My assignment was the pit board. In the interest of safety, that spot has been moved behind pit wall by using a pole with a pit board attached, but back then you were the lone crewman allowed over the wall, directly on pit road to provide your driver a reference point while speeding (there was no pit road speed limit back then) towards his service box.

The rest of the crew was allowed over the wall only when their car was some four stalls away from his home. Drivers would routinely enter their individual pit by driving through adjacent pit boxes keeping crews from shaving time and jumping into action early. It was racing's version of a "brush-back" pitch.

My job was to protect out pit turf by straddling the outer boundary, thereby forcing the competition to drive around me. I'm not sure whether it was bravery or stupidity that motivated me, but I fearlessly stood out there challenging any and all predators.

Looking back on that time, I am still amazed that I was never hit.

There is no quick fix to the exposure that crew members find themselves in on each pit stop. It is all but impossible to require every track to totally restructure the design of their pit areas. Widening the road and increasing the pit box sizes and including some buffer between each is the answer in a perfect world, but we don't live in a perfect world and economic realities all but preclude such action.

Consideration can be given to outlawing green flag pit stops.

While a critical part of most race strategies, it is an area that can be scrutinized in much the same manner as speed limits. It will not remove the potential for injury, but would certainly reduce it. A lot of scenarios would have to be addressed and the end result would drastically change the race routines that fans have become accustomed to, but it is an area that should be examined.

In the meantime, crew members know the environment they work in. They accept the risk and do acknowledge that things like the Homestead incident on occasion do happen. It does not come as a shock to anyone who has ever worked on an "over the wall crew." If helmets would reduce exposure then they should be considered. But it is simply an expeditious reaction to call for use of helmets without also exploring other remedies.