"Is there any easy cure for this?" Coil asked. "When Dale Earnhardt got killed, were there any giant changes? No, I don't think so. You know why? Because it wasn't obvious what you could do that was reasonable to make it any better. . . . Sometimes you say, 'I don't know what to do to make this any better. It happens once in awhile.' So stop racing fuel cars or live with it. That's how it is.

"When Tony Schumacher crashed, it wasn't obvious to me what he should do to make it better," Coil said. "It was a damn shame that when Blaine Johnson crashed, what was obvious was the guard rail shouldn't have a hole in it. They addressed that nationwide. I guess we're all doing as best we can on the safety issues and trying to make a living."

Besides, in the context of relatively few deaths in a two-decade span, he added, "I don't think it's reasonable to think there are any atrocities going on here." Arguably, one death is an atrocity.

Coil hinted he doesn't feel compelled to make a change to justify the task force's existence. "I'm sure you could set out to build the world's safest race car," he said. "And it would look like a tank and it would weigh as much and it also wouldn't be much faster. And I don't think anybody would pay to see that. There's some point where you've got to

ADVERTISEMENT

say, 'Well, there's nothing reasonable we can do.' This time there was."

Miller echoed Coil's contention about safety. "More people in the U.S. die each year from driving home or walking home from school," he said. "Do you see any big flap in the papers about that? No. We just accept that. But when someone dies in racing, we wave a red flag. That's not fair."

He added, "These cars are still going to go 300 miles an hour or more. They're still going to crash, burn, and blow up. The only way to stop that is to never start the thing. Men are always going to race. That's the way we're made. Take mountain climbing. Every man who climbs Mount Everest and makes it to the top has to step over 70 dead bodies of guys who didn't make it."

That mountain is remorseless, just like a lake that could claim the life of a child and one minute later still look glassy on the surface. And a racetrack doesn't know or feel. It's made out of concrete and asphalt and has no heart and soul. We want the world to be different, to give us at least a fighting chance sometimes. And even if we know racing sometimes doesn't have any easy fixes, we still would like to know that Those Who Are In Charge have tried to find them.

It sounds cruel. It is cruel. At a time like this, "That's racin' " rings hollow, but it rings true. No one is going to change a drag racer's psyche or a crew chief's make-up. They thrive on the thrill and will keep driving quick and fast cars. And NHRA will continue happily to collect money for the show -- task force or no task force.