Safety First

Thanks largely to such innovations as head and neck safety restraints and the steel and foam energy reduction barrier (SAFER), six drivers walked away from wrecks at Las Vegas on Sunday that in an earlier era might have been catastrophic. The violent impact of Jeff Gordon's car with an unpadded infield wall on Lap 263 (above), however, renewed the urgency to make NASCAR racing even safer. It's past time to mandate that every wall at every track be outfitted with the SAFER barriers. Las Vegas Motor Speedway officials said that the track's barriers will be reviewed and changes recommended by NASCAR would be implemented. That's important because, as Gordon put it upon emerging from a postwreck checkup, "That could have been very bad."