@Steve
Made of stern stuff indeed, but it could be viewed as an added complication and as volunteers it will all come down to the individual of choices of the various marshalls club members as to whether they consider it an unacceptable hazard or not. Whilst we haven't had a full on tank breach in F1 for some time (Berger in '89 springs to mind - radiator punched through tub and fuel bladder), this is new. The electrical KERS solutions all add a further potential ignition source. The flywheel based systems add the potential for kinetic energy mayhem, + a further but perhaps lower risk ignition source depending on the properties of the materials used.
If I were in the marshalling business rather than the watching business, I might feel altogether more sanguine if a few examples of the technology were subjected to worse case failure modes pre season. I strongly suspect that some clerks of the course would feel similarly about running some sort of risk assessment prior to the start of the season. The job is dangerous enough with the risks of preceding seasons. Whilst no driver has died in an accident in a current F1 car since 1994, we have lost marshalls a lot more recently than that bloody awful May weekend.
Apart from anything else, the worse thing a marshall can do is turn up on the scene and require rescue him/herself, and an understanding of the new risks is going to be absolutely required to prevent this possibility.
I suspect a lack of imagination crops up frequently amongst the drivers, but some of the more responsible guys will be thinking the same, partly for their own safety, that of their teams, and that of the marshalls and spectators.
I honestly believe KERS has got the possibility of adding a little extra spice into GP weekends, but it does need to be understood from a safety view, especially if the technology is going to be aimed at road car use. This season however, as with every season with hefty new rule packages, I reckon the eventual winner will be the team that comes up with the a nice simple conservative approach and finishes all their races.
We'll see. (Flames - what I don't want to be seeing this F1 season)