I feel the problem is the sand trap itself. The sand trap is designed to be used in an emergency, the problem is that you're taking an out of control car traveling at extreme speeds, and having it slam into a solid object (sand and water become solid at high speed). Couple that with cars that have no suspension at all, are highly aerodynamic, and sit two inches off the ground. What happens is the nose buries itself in the sand, and hurdles the car through the air like a catapult, just ask Del Worsham from his crash two years ago, and that was only around 80 mph, not 300. And its even worse for motorcycle riders, as it hurdles the driver through the air, like the rider from Pomona last fall, and Steve Johnson this year. And its not just the sand traps that need to be looked at, like John Force has been saying for a while now, the safety measures regarding the chassis in Funny Cars has barely been looked at in over two decades, meanwhile the cars are going nearly twice as fast.
For this crash, if you look at the picture of the end of the track;
you see that the barriers are way past the catch net at the end of the sand trap. They usually position the top end camera above or just behind the catch net. His car went strait into the sand, so the only way he hit the camera boom is if he was already airborne. What probably happened is exactly what happened to Worsham's car, he hit the sand and the car nosed in and the momentum hurdled the car into the air, hitting the camera boom, then coming down on top of the barriers right before Pension Road.
There have been people saying that the shut down needs to be lengthened. That doesnt really make any sense what so ever. First, say you lengthen every national event track 500'. Say then you have the same situation. All that will happen will be that the car will plow into the sand at say 275mph instead of 300. It'll still be fatal. Second, I dont think that there are even HALF of the national event tracks that even have the available real estate to do that. I know at least the tracks that have been national event tracks for a long time and are important races don't, like E-Town, Pomona, and Indy (Indy has about 250' until the train tracks). Then, who pays for that? Is NHRA going to hand out a million dollars to each track for that, or does that expense fall on the track itself? Lengthening the shut down isnt going to happen, if it does, it'll take a 24 event season and make it maybe a 12 event season, then the sponsors will start to back out because of the decreased publicity, and now you have IHRA.
heres a link to the Worsham crash. I couldnt find the one crash by itself, buts its in this collection.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqx-3HJSCZU