Six months ago, Talladega Superspeedway was host to one of the most dramatic finishes in Sprint Cup history. Rookie Brad Keselowski, driving for an underfunded James Finch team, shocked the racing world with his first career win in NASCAR’s top series.

But five years from now, people may no longer remember who won that race. What will remain with them is the image of Carl Edwards’ Ford Fusion flying through the air, high into the fence along the tri-oval before flipping violently back onto the racing surface. (You can watch it by clicking on the Youtube window below.)

At the time, Edwards appeared to take the entire ordeal in stride. He emerged from the car, which came to rest a few hundred feet in front of the start-finish line on the final lap. And from there he scampered across the line, as though he was somehow paying tribute to the Ricky Bobby character from the NASCAR-themed movie “Talladega Nights.“

(Just an aside, but if you’re a NASCAR fan and haven’t seen the movie, I encourage it. The race strategy in it is more sound than anything you’d see in “Days of Thunder.“)

Edwards—who led the final lap until he mistakenly cut in front of the second-place Keselowski, which led to his crash—joked that having gotten that close to the finish line, he wasn’t going to be denied.

Afterward, though, his message was no joke: “NASCAR has put us in this box, and we’ll race like this until we kill someone, and then they’ll change it.‘’

Fortunately, because the fence did its job, no one was killed. However, a handful of fans was injured, including Blake Bobbitt, whose jaw was broken when a piece of Edwards’ car flew into the frontstretch grandstands.

Here were are, six months later, and the series returns to Talladega.

You will see cosmetic changes this weekend, because the fence has been raised from 14 to 22 feet. Also, the restrictor plate has been slightly reduced to slow the cars some, and a side wicker has been allowed, which NASCAR hopes will settle the back end of the cars.

But overall, NASCAR seems content to blame the accident on bad fortune, and it’s still not exactly sure why Edwards’ car reacted the way it did that day.

I’m sorry, but that’s just not good enough.

Edwards isn’t the only one to voice his concerns. Three-time Cup champion Jimmie Johnson offered a more drastic resolution.

“I don’t know how we fix it unless we take a bunch of tractors out there and knock down the walls, knock down the banking, and make the track where you have to let off [the gas],“ Johnson said. “I don’t think there is a rule that NASCAR can come up with.“

You have to understand something about these guys. They know the risks they take every time they step into a race car. It’s not chess, and people have and will continue to be injured.

But when some of the best drivers in the world are making grim predictions, it’s time for someone in NASCAR to listen.

So why does NASCAR continue with this formula, which hasn’t produced anything in the way of skilled racing in a while?

The short answer is obvious: the spectacle. Some fans likely have bought tickets expecting to see the second-biggest pileup of the year, and NASCAR officials are hoping that translates into more eyeballs watching in the waning laps of Sunday’s Amp Energy 500.

But considering all the effort NASCAR has put into driver safety, including introducing a car that has proved a miserable failure from a competition standpoint, why wouldn’t they try something to improve the show and potentially make it safer?

Earlier this year, the series adopted double-file restarts, and that Band-Aid has almost made the fans forget how uncompetitive this car is without the smoke and mirrors. Why not go further this week?

Any easy fix would be getting rid of the yellow line. In the past two year, it has led to a) a potential winner losing his win following a penalty for an illegal pass, and b) a nearly horrific crash because two drivers were fighting for a very small part of real estate on a track that has as much of it as any place on the circuit.

Is this the only answer? Of course not. But it’s incumbent on series officials to do something.

Unfortunately, NASCAR President Mike Helton doesn’t see it this way.

“When you review the accident, what sent [Carl Edwards’ car] up was being impacted by another car,“ Helton said. “There’s not an aero fix for something like that.“

That’s not a view Ryan Newman shares, and he was the one inside the car that struck Edwards after his contact with Keselowski.

“There’s an aero fix for everything,“ Newman told the Virginian-Pilot. “Carl’s car was airborne before I hit him. I know that.“

So we’re stuck with a similar situation, drivers with no place to go and another potential disaster waiting in the wings over 500 miles.

Hopefully, we’ll see a clean winner. Hopefully, no one will be injured along the way.

But it’s sad, in this day and age of NASCAR, that those things have to be decided completely by chance.

Agree or disagree with Chris’ take? Let him know by e-mailing him here.

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Is it time to get rid of the yellow line at Talladega? Time to level the track? There are no easy answers, but it is time to do something.