Safety Issue: Robots Moving in Pits

[robochick1319]

I brought this up in another thread and it was recommended that it become it's own topic so here it is.

I have a major concern about teams running/driving/powering on their robots in the pit. There are 3 places where a robot is turned on and enabled: the practice field, the team's pit, and the competition field. When the robot is on and enabled in the pit, it should be on blocks of some kind that prevent the wheels from touching the ground.

My team had serious safety incident at a regional when another team was "practicing driving" with their robot in the pit directly across from us, lost control, and literally ran one of our mentors over. It was reported and dealt with but the story doesn't end there. It's been a few years and I STILL see teams running their robots on the pit floor, intentionally or not.

It is particularly alarming to me since I see children and disabled visitors in the pit area who could be greatly injured by a rampaging robot and couldn't easily run away.

Has anyone noticed this safety issue? Any ideas of what can we do as a community to raise awareness of it?

(Also, this is my first time every starting a thread. That's how much I care about this. Yikes )