@BuggysCanonWife I am getting better. Just not quite as quickly as I had originally hoped. And not in the exact way the physical therapist wants me to get better. (I'm postponing the exercises that put too much strain on me last time.)
I threw out my back last week and have been mostly on bed-rest since then. The physical therapist that I'm seeing told me that I was "making her life difficult" because some of the exercises she gave me were too painful to do.
I guess I forego the exercises while they remain too painful, and accept the punishment for not following my PT's instructions? Once I figure out what that would even entail. It's hard to think of something aversive-but-not-damaging with my current physical state.
I feel pretty guilty about that, but also, I REALLY don't want to over-exert myself and do something that's painful and accidentally make my injury worse.
I've already set myself back several days on recovery by trying to do more than I'm capable of too soon.
Not in the airline industry, but have friends who are. They all give the same answer: when your seat is reclined during takeoff, the person behind you physically cannot do the one thing proven to cut crash injuries. Federal law requires your seat up for exactly this reason.
That one thing is the brace position. When a crash is coming, passengers are told to fold hard forward, head against their knees or the seat in front. Get your head touching something before impact arrives, so it cannot slam forward into something solid.
The NTSB (the US board that investigates plane crashes) documented in 1994 that the brace position cuts head and neck injuries. If the seat in front is reclined into the space of the person sitting behind it, there is no room to get there.
The second issue is the aisle. Rows of seats have gotten much closer together since the 1970s (from about 35 inches apart to 28-31 inches on most airlines today). A reclined seat in those conditions can trap the person behind against their own seatback. Getting up and turning toward the aisle becomes very hard. In 90 seconds with smoke, very hard can become impossible.
Before going into service, every commercial plane must prove to America's aviation regulator (the FAA) that it can fully empty the cabin within 90 seconds. Half the exits must be blocked during the test. That test came from 1960s crash research: when a plane survives a crash, fire and smoke are what kill people still on board. Evacuation speed is the variable.
Third: when a seat is fully upright, it clicks into a locked position. A reclined seat has no such lock. In a sudden hard stop, an unlocked seat can jerk forward fast, injuring whoever is sitting in it and anyone directly behind.
Boeing's accident data from 2014 to 2023 puts 67% of all fatal commercial crashes in just 11 minutes of a flight: the first 3 after takeoff and the last 8 before landing. The rest of a flight is statistically safe to recline. Those 11 minutes are not.
@BloodVariety I haven't been priced out yet, but only because I was lucky enough to:
1. Find a bunch of product at MSRP (shout-out to my LGS!)
2. Pull several $600+ chase cards that I traded for the SIRs I personally wanted.
I look forward to the bottom dropping out.