Getting drivers out of their cars before an initial interview is exactly what needs to be avoided. Apparently those who wrote the proposed rule agree with that.
Peter, that’s exactly what should happen. Think of it as forced arbitration or mediation. Both drivers report to the designated area. An official finds Driver 1 and says we have a report from T6 that your car 73 and Car 37 made contact at the T6 apex. Can you explain what happened? Official then goes to Driver #2 and says we have a report from T6 that your car 37 and 73 tangled at the apex. Can you explain what happened?
If the drivers agree, shake hands, agree racing incident or somebody apologizes, no other drivers impacted, no extenuating circumstances like this was during a FCY or Local Yellow, etc the official can release them. The official gets their separate stories first then the drivers can chat with each other about the incident, shake and make up or agree to disagree. The official is there mediating. Official still has the option of calling for the writing paper or one of the drivers may protest. But the basic idea is that if you know you have to face the guy you just punted or may punt in a dive bomb pass, perhaps we’ll all be a little more civil out there. And if there is damage to repair, it can be noted in the log books, and the contact investigation can also be noted in the log book (damage or not) if warranted.
This is going to call for some judgement to implement. That’s why the definition of “significant body contact†was added. CRB was trying to set some basic boundary conditions. If there’s side-by-side contact, both drivers continue, nothing but a tire donut or easily buffed out scrapes, I don’t expect that to be written in a log book and it should be a pretty short and reasonably amicable discussion afterwards. But if your contact resulted in significant damage to the other guys car, you punted him off course, etc, I would expect that contact written into your log book. Enough of those contacts written up, with or without official points on your license and we can have a nice basis for a driver review.
Tracks you frequent may be different, but the ones I race out here, Pit lane and BF station is not the place to have those conversations. It may be the place to flag a driver and tell them to report to the DIIS location however. As noted above I feel one of the important aspects of this rule is drivers talking to other drivers face-to-face about an incident in a controlled (mediated) environment.