[Purist]

I'm just going to assume you mixed up your numbers at WGI when it comes to the "average".

What you can physically fit when the vehicles are sitting still and what you can realistically do when at racing speeds are two entirely different things.

Four lanes? The Dallara DW12 is 79.2 inches wide, so (72.9x4)/12=26.4 feet. Even I don't think "the Boot" is THAT narrow.

Wouldn't the optical illusion work the other way? That is, if the track fills up more of the space between the barriers, isn't that going to mike it look wider, not narrower? BTW, with my eyesight, when I focus in close on the images, I don't have a large enough area of fine focus to really see the barriers, which kind of negates the illusion anyway.

Five wide? The latest iteration of the Porsche 911 GT3 Cup is 72.87 inches wide. So, for ease of calculation, (73x5)/12=30.417 feet, or 30 feet, 5 inches.

The maximum allowed width for a GTE/GTLM car is 2,050 mm or 80.7 inches.

I can't get the full listing to show on the Google search page, but at the least, the Toyota Camry (NASCAR) is 71.7 inches wide, and the Chevrolet SS is 74.76 inches wide.

The 2017 LMP2s have a maximum width of 1,900 mm, or 74.8 inches.

That Aston Martin looked not entirely dissimilar to what happened with Katherine Legge in the 2006 ChampCar race at Road America when her rear wing failed on the approach to "the Kink". I don't like it, but ALL of these older circuits have quite a history of nasty accidents. You'd have to practically destroy them to largely eliminate that risk.

The LMPs won't be doing the sorts of speeds shortly after Surtees that they will be at Farm or in the Porsche Curves, especially not the non-hybrid LMPs. In a sense, it's actually better having the barriers so close, because there simply isn't the space for the car to travel, and for its momentum vector to shift to as steep an angle of impact. If they need a spotters' stand there just past Surtees, or at the fallaway of Pilgrim's Drop, I'm sure that could be sorted relatively easily.

If driving standards have fallen so much that it's an inordinate risk at this point, compared to what they face at other circuits, which I don't think it's worse than LM, then that speaks to a bigger problem. In that case, the drivers actually NEED MORE exposure to "a proper racetrack" (thank you John Watson) to instill a healthy sense of precaution and respect. Then, and only then, will less "stupid stuff" occur.