If safety was a prime objective then they would follow indycars lead and limit the number of personnel in the pits. No one can come out until the car has stopped, and car cannot leave until all personnel back in the garage/behind a line. That doesn't prevent the chances of an unsafe release, but it does slow things down and put a lot less people in harms way. It won't happen because F1 rarely copy anthing that indy do, and they get very excited about the speed of the stops.I wonder if they can change the pit layout at some of the tracks to reduce the risks to mechanics but allow proper pit stop 'racing' for want of a better word. At the moment there is an inherent 'unfairness' to pit stops where a driver can lose a place solely due to another car driving down the pits at the wrong moment. Someone else pointed out that those at the extreme ends of the pits are far less likely to suffer than those in the middle, so rather than finding ways to remove the fun and competition of the pit stops, how can the pits layouts be changed to allow teams to release cars even if another one is coming without ruining safety? Could 'barriers' be put up around each pit box to protect the crew inside the box? Would that even work?
The only other solution I can see is to go the extreme opposite and remove any competitive element from pit stops by enforcing a minimum time stationary but that doesn't necessarily resolve the unsafe release if another car is coming still.
The FIA really do massively need to sort this out someway or another. I don't agree with the attitude that it's the team's fault if there is an unsafe release so the driver shouldn't penalised. The driver directly benefits from the decision of the release in front of another car and if you asked them off record what action they'd want the time to take, they'd all say to release them and take the risk. The FIA need to make this an absolute safety matter and they should strongly consider black flags for obvious and extremely dangerous releases. I also don't agree with the poster who said that releasing a car with only 3 wheels or a nut not done up right shouldn't be further penalised, yes it should! The car was released like that because the team were too eager to release the car and took the risk. If they'd taken a few more precious seconds they could have fixed it before the release therefore they only have themselves to blame.
I don't see a need to change the garages, rather than the mindset of the teams. As far as unfairness goes, motorsport is full of it, that's just part of the game, and something you just have to get on with.
