If you will be seated on a plane, flying home for the holidays, it might be a good idea to request a seat in the back. According to a recent study:
Real-world crash stats [...] suggest that the farther back you sit, the better your odds of survival. Passengers near the tail of a plane are about 40 percent more likely to survive a crash than those in the first few rows up front.
That’s the conclusion of an exclusive Popular Mechanics study that examined every commercial jet crash in the United States, since 1971, that had both fatalities and survivors.
In 11 of the 20 crashes, rear passengers clearly fared better. Only five accidents favored those sitting forward. Three were tossups, with no particular pattern of survival. In one case, seat positions could not be determined. [Popular Mechanics, via LifeHack.org]
Get in the back, son!
Kelly Sutton
on December 2, 2007 @ 7:24 am
Well this is nice and depressing.