Safety aspects of our hobby...

[RussMurco]

I just saw a sad picture from the Power Tour in 2010, one of the participants had a head-on collision in his 69 Camaro which killed him and severely injured his 14 y/o son. The car looked mostly stock, the passenger compartment held up fairly well, but the impact was enough to crush the front and transfered enough energy to bend the rear quarter and, of course, kill the driver.
We typically drive older cars created before energy disapation was really built into the cars, I've been in a 50 mph head-on collision in a 1966 Mustang and my knee is still a problem after 30 years, so what can we do to make them safer beyond putting padded dash panels and 3-point belts in?
This picture also got me wondering about these performance sub-frames we put on our cars don't seem to have any "crumple-zones" and are often just straight-up rectangular tubing. Add down-bars and, in my mind, there is less chance of the frame absorbing the impact thereby transferring that energy to the occupants. I know NASCARS have had similar frames from 40+ years but we aren't trying to absorb 100+ mph wall impacts. Has anyone looked at making the structures safer for passenger protection?