Two thoughts:
1. We have more injuries in the pits, than we do on the course. And.....Remembering a friend nearly dying after helping push a '51 Chevy pickup backward one winter day, I wonder why we still mess with these glass sealed beams. The lens caved in, cutting all the arteries and tendons in his left wrist. It was a very close call to get him to a hospital fast enough. Dumb mistake, I know, but a taped up sealed beam wont protect in a similar event. I have seen people in the pits push on the taped up lamp, not wanting to put finger prints on the car. Open pits and helpful spectators....puts my heart in my throat, every time.
2. Taping up the lens of a sealed beam is only half the job. The back/reflector is as bad, or worse, when its broken and scattered in a crash. Asking everyone to remove their headlamps, to check the tape on the back of the lamp, is an inspection process we dont want.
Jim, I worked for a lighting company for years. PAR lamps, when broken, create shards that can easily create the injuries your friend suffered. Imagine what they would do to a motorcycle tire.
See that? Just what i was talking about. Flat plates. Areo design. Carbon fiber. If you want to build an altered why not just build an altered?
And down that road lies
M A D N E S S ! 
I am thinking safety first, but not at too much cost. Have people double or triple tape their head and tail lights, or allow wind tunnel designed, carbon, titanium, spun aluminum, or depleted uranium headlights. $2 or $2000, is it going to make a fig newton of difference in speed?
On a 2 headlight vehicle, we're talking about potentially changing the contour - and again, not all that radically - of a little less than 77 sq. inches of surface. The Midget front is about 3200 sq. inches.
That's incrementally changing the
contour on about 2 1/2 percent of the total frontal area.
That kind of variance can occur on two identical cars coming off of the same assembly line, if the guy leading the seams is hung over.
I can legally do that now by simply removing my Wagner headlights and replacing them with Lucas lamps,
and they would still be legal.
I think the insignificant amount of drag reduction that this change might -
MIGHT - create - and there is only speculation that it could be an aero advantage - makes falling on the side of safety the priority.
Let me pose these questions - when roadsters were required to switch over from roll bars to full cages, were the changes in speeds a concern to the rule makers? When roof rails were mandated, was the effect on overall speeds a consideration?
At the end of the day, I'll run what they'll let me run, but I expect that as the rule book gets thicker and thicker, we're likely close to the point where any non-laminated glass is going to be prohibited.
