It’s still a place where you need to have your wits about you, but time was when a Formula 1 pitlane was a very dangerous place to be. After the utterly disastrous San Marino Grand Prix weekend in 1994 a whole raft of changes, to both technical and sporting regulations, was introduced, and one of these had nothing to do with the fatal accidents to Ayrton Senna and Roland Ratzenberger.

Late in the race at Imola Michele Alboreto’s Minardi (below) shed a wheel as it accelerated out of pitlane, and several mechanics were injured. When Max Mosley announced the forthcoming changes, in Monaco two weeks later, one of them was that henceforth there should be a speed limit in the pitlane.

It may be argued that this detracted from the drama of pitstops, and certainly it was an almighty experience to be close at hand for a ‘full speed’ stop, but if I have sometimes railed against changes made in the interests of safety – like ‘safety car’ rolling starts whenever the day is wet, for example – I never had any problems in accepting a pitlane speed limit. Yes, it’s true that at first it seemed almost comical to watch a car crawl towards its pit, there to be set upon by a horde of mechanics working like dervishes, only for it then to crawl away again. The effect was similar to playing with fast-forward on a remote, but we soon got used to it, and eventually the practice was embraced by every major racing series on earth.

Watch a pre-94 pitstop now, and it’s hard to take in that it could ever have been like that: harder still to believe that it didn’t cost a lot of lives over time.

Back in 1981 I was in the pits during a morning practice session at the Belgian Grand Prix at Zolder, and witnessed something that I wish I had not. The old pitlane at Zolder was ludicrously narrow, and as I watched Carlos Reutemann (below) coming towards me, slowly – this was only practice remember – making his way out, so I also saw someone fall backwards from the pitwall, right into the path of the Williams.

There was not a thing Reutemann could do, and the sight of his car literally bouncing into the air has not surprisingly stayed with me. There was nothing to be done. The young Osella mechanic, who had stepped backwards into nowhere, died immediately.

Only a few days later I was at Indianapolis, walking down the pitlane at the end of Carburation Day, the traditional final practice session before the 500. Believing everyone to be back in the pits, I was strolling along – my back to the entry to pitlane – when something literally brushed my leg, nicking my trousers and leaving the minutest of nicks in my right calf. It was the blue Lightning-Cosworth of Gary Bettenhausen (below), the last man to come off the track, and as he turned into pitlane he cut the engine, and was thus still travelling in complete silence – and still at huge speed.

It was entirely my own fault – I simply wasn’t paying enough attention – but even now, 30 years on, I can still recall the fear of that instant. Nothing else in my life has come close to it.

Now, in the interests of ‘being seen to be green’, the proposal from the FIA is that from 2014, when the new more environmentally-friendly V6 turbo engines arrive, cars should run on ‘electric power’ only when running the pits.

The idea apparently came originally from Max Mosley, who owned a Toyota Prius and was much into this sort of thing – indeed it was he who, looking to the F1 of the future, seriously asked me if I thought ‘the noise’ was important to race fans.

I said yes, I did – emphatically – think so, indeed suggested that to F1 aficionados the sound of a car was probably as important as the sight of it. Max seemed surprised by my response – for him, he said, the noise rather got in the way of the commentary. Clearly, there was to be no meeting of minds on this.

At the time, of course, we were talking about cars out on the track racing, and it may well be – some time, I hope, after I have ceased to care – that Grand Prix cars will be all-electric, still proceeding with great speed but in total silence.

In the shorter term comes this proposal that they be all-electric in the pitlane, and – short of speed bumps – I cannot conceive of anything more asinine. For a sport these days literally obsessed with safety, could there be a more potentially hazardous introduction?

As is so often the way with blinkered change, it stems in essence from political correctness, from fear of being judged, of being thought out of step. If cars negotiate their way through pitlane in total silence, the mandatory speed limit will make little difference – Reutemann was doing maybe 10mph when he hit the Italian lad.

Bernie Ecclestone, not surprisingly, is one who passionately believes that the sound of motor racing is vital to its survival, and nowhere more so than in the pits. Bernie has rightly condemned this FIA plan for 2014, and I hope they have the common sense to take note. It’s an absurdity, and a criminally dangerous one at that.