This is my perspective as a guy who has options on how to spend his disposable dollars for a weekend of fun. SCCA racing is amazingly exhilarating and challenging. As a guy who has no aspiration or ability to make a living in racing it is very difficult to accept the trade off of car damage for something that is meant to be fun. In addition the vision of cars (in all classes) being carted off in various stages of crumple-ization (I made that word up) is not something that family or non racers take kindly to as observers for the weekend. Trust me, saying to the wife to "not worry because that won't happen to me" does not pass the BS sniffer of my wife and I presume 99pct of non racing spouses. It is likely a different perspective for the highly skilled racers who generally are working with the same individuals at the front, but I imagine can be frustrating for them when they are catching the slow drivers. Meaning, no car contact would be good for all. While SM is the most popular class in SCCA, I believe that it would be over subscribed consistently if SCCA could tackle the issue of car contact. Certainly at a regional level, I think that there is potential. I think if there was some way to measure how many people choose something else than SCCA because of car contact, that that would be a starting point. There are tons of opportunities to get on track and although they are not technically racing, those events at least in Florida typically sell out. Keeping the class popular and at a high caliber needs to keep the customers coming in who are happy to spend their dispo-dollars. The young racers who have bigger aspirations will likely move on through SM to bigger and better things. The people who are doing this for fun ultimately have the most control on how great an experience it is. I think it is possible to improve things for all with a better handle on what to do about car contact.
As someone with a shoestring (a tattered one at that) budget, concern about damage impacts me a lot. I have to consider risks of venue, car counts and even weather when I do a race. I wish that wasn't the case. Damage from contact is money and time just thrown away, which is not easily recuperated. When I see some of the damage caused by overly aggressive and sometime stupid maneuvers, especially from repeat offenders, I've wondered if requiring them to pay for the repairs to the other cars would quell this problem... But then things could get real nasty if damage was extensive. Ultimately, I think a combination of driver education, electronic log books (with NASA cross-ref) and training the workers on what/when/how to call incidents of behavior & contact will be need to improve things for the long haul.