TALLADEGA, Ala. -- Guilty as charged.

For years, the debate has raged about whether racing is safe at Talladega Superspeedway. Heck, the debate raged before NASCAR held its very first race at the 2.66-mile track in 1969 -- when a group of marquee drivers led by none other than Richard Petty boycotted the place because they didn't think the tires they were running on would hold up under the strain of the high speeds the unique configuration produced.

Eight fans injured

Carl Edwards walked away from his horrific crash but one lady in the stands was air-lifted to the hospital with injuries from flying debris.

• Complete story
• Final Laps: Edwards gets air
• Dr. Lewis reports on spectators
• Edwards on his dramatic wreck
• Newman criticizes car safety
• Junior wants yellow line to stay

It raged furiously in 1987 when Bobby Allison's car fish-tailed and went tail-first into the safety fence on the frontstretch -- eerily close to the same place and in the same manner that Carl Edwards' car soared during a final-lap wreck at the Aaron's 499 race on Sunday. Allison's wreck led to NASCAR mandating restrictor plates for the races at Daytona and Talladega, which was supposed to slow down the drivers and keep their cars from flying through the air.

That was 22 years ago.

But always -- before and since Allison, before and after restrictor plates were added to the mix -- the racing at Talladega was highly entertaining for the stout hearted.

Others swore it off, but for many of us -- this writer included -- we just couldn't get enough of the mayhem that is a race at Talladega. But now, even our eyes have been opened wide.

The drivers are still pushing 200 miles an hour down the straightaways at 'Dega, which isn't far off what they were doing when Allison's wreck occurred nearly two decades ago. And after watching in horror as Edwards' car flew with reckless, uncontrollable abandon toward a packed grandstand on Sunday, spewing fence pieces and car parts through the air unimpeded, isn't it time for something to be done?

Edwards certainly thought so after the race.

"Hopefully they can do something somehow to change this style of racing," Edwards said. "I guess we'll do this until somebody gets killed and then we'll change it, but that's the way it is."

NASCAR's response

Jim Hunter, NASCAR's vice president of corporate communications, said he strongly disagrees with Edwards' bold statement. He said that NASCAR always has done and will continue to do whatever it can to make racing safe at all the tracks where its drivers compete.

He pointed out that the new car that was introduced full-time into the Cup Series last year is the safest one developed yet, and that the safety fence at Talladega held and did its job Sunday when it kicked Edwards' No. 99 Ford back onto the race track.

“

What if the car goes up in the grandstands and kills 25 people? ... I don't know if I could live with myself if I ended up in the grandstands.

”

-- CARL EDWARDS

Of course, that was after debris from either the fence or Edwards' car -- or a combination of both -- flew into the stands and injured eight fans. Fortunately, most of the injuries appear to be minor -- although one female fan who suffered a laceration on her lip and possibly a broken jaw almost certainly would beg to differ. She came to see a stock-car race and left feeling like she had just gone one round too many with Mike Tyson (or whoever is the heavyweight champ these days).

Still, Hunter placed at least part of the blame for the wildness and recklessness that is a race at 'Dega on the drivers themselves.

"This is a big, fast race track, no doubt," Hunter said. "But our drivers are professional race drivers. There are limits to everything. And it seems as though no matter what, our drivers are going to stretch it to the limit -- no matter what it is.

"This place is wide enough to race on. You saw that [Sunday]. And yes, you saw a lot of accidents. Most of 'em were caused not by car failure, not by parts and pieces failure, but by overaggressive drivers or a driver making just one little slip. That's one of the things here. They run so close together that one little slip can cause a chain reaction, as we saw [Sunday]."

The drivers' reaction

Yet Edwards wasn't the only driver calling for change before it is too late following Sunday's incident.

Others such as Ryan Newman and Dale Earnhardt Jr. said that the new car bunches everyone up so close together and makes it impossible to go fast at Talladega unless you bump-draft with a partner all the way around the track. That is a highly dangerous way of driving a race car at speeds of nearly 200 mph, and makes it difficult to run any other way if you want to run for the win.

Edwards, in fact, did his best to stay out of the fray all day Sunday. He rode in the back and patiently bided his time while others bumped and banged each other out of contention.

Then, with about 30 laps to go, he started to make his move. He eventually hooked up in a two-car draft with rookie Brad Keselowski, and they were fast enough together to not only catch but blow by the two-car tandem of Newman and Earnhardt on the final lap.

The mayhem that was Edwards' airborne assault on the safety fence occurred when he tried to go low to block Keselowski a little late, after Keselowski already had gotten a fender below him on the inside. Keselowski, hungering for his first Cup win, wasn't going to lift and surely wasn't going to go below the yellow "out of bounds" line after what happened to another rookie, Regan Smith, at Talladega only six months earlier.

Smith did so then to avoid wrecking leader Tony Stewart "and maybe half the field," but was ruled out of bounds and went from what he thought was his first victory and at worst a second-place finish to 18th in an instant. Keselowski knew that and swore his fate would be different.

He was right. But in his determination, he altered Edwards' fate as well.

"I guess if I had it to do over again, I'd just move over and let him go and finish fourth. I wouldn't even try to win -- because you're going to have wrecks like that if you try," Edwards said.

The bottom line

When it was all over, Newman said he felt "lucky to be able to cross the start-finish line." He meant with himself and his car intact. Edwards crossed it, too, but on foot after miraculously climbing out of the smoking, burning carnage that was his race car and jogging across it on foot.

"I just felt like I needed to finish the race," he said. "That's too damn close to walk away."

Despite the Ricky Bobby gesture, good humor was not in great abundance around the garage afterward. Most everyone outside of the understandably exuberant race winner Keselowski seemed somber, as if disaster on a large scale had been narrowly avoided and some day is inevitable if something isn't done to make this place safer.

"You have to understand that, like, for years, we have had wrecks like this every time we come to Talladega, ever since the plate got here -- and for years it was celebrated," Earnhardt said. "The media celebrated it, the [television] networks celebrated it, calling it 'the Big One,' just trying to attract attention and to bring people's attention to the race.

"So there is a responsibility with the media and the networks and the sanctioning body itself to come to their senses a little bit and think about the situation. I mean, you can't sit here and jump up and down and go, 'Wow, what I saw today was crazy.' I don't think it's right ... but the media and the networks and everybody has been celebrating that stuff for years."

Again, guilty as charged. (And you can be sure Sunday's wild wreck will be shown again and again when it's time to ramp up the ticket sales and television ratings for the next Talladega race).

But something has to change. Sunday should be a wake-up call to everyone.

"It's what we have to do," Edwards said of coming to Talladega to race. "I don't know how I'd change this racing. I know it's a spectacle for everybody and that's great and all -- but it's not right to ask all these guys to come out and do this. What if the car goes up in the grandstands and kills 25 people? ... I don't know if I could live with myself if I ended up in the grandstands."

Sunday, he came too close. It's been said before but it needs to be said again: something needs to change before they race again at Talladega Superspeedway, or they shouldn't race there.

As Earnhardt pointed out, it can be a blast to watch. No doubt about that.

But no one enjoyed those few seconds Sunday when Edwards' life -- and perhaps those of some fans -- appeared to hang mid-air in jeopardy. Logic outweighs entertainment value here, and demands immediate changes that will make a real difference this time.

The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.

Joe Menzer is the author of "The Great American Gamble: How the 1979 Daytona 500 Gave Birth to a NASCAR Nation." Click here to purchase.