Ffing 5-pt vs booster safety

I Know I've seen threads that have debated this before (i may have even started one), but I'm on my phone and searching is tricky.

Are there any scientific studies supporting boostering being safer than a ffing 5-pt harness for a child mature enough to sit properly all the time (and meeting height/weight requirements for both seats)? I asked about this in my class today, and was told 5-pt is unequivocally safer, and I thought there was some arguments on both sides.

Pointing me to old threads is fine, but articles are better I'm specifically looking for the booster is safer argument, since that was the contentious bit.

No, there aren't studies or articles. It'd be nice if there were.

The ideas:
North Americans feel that the five points are better. They distribute crash forces over the five strongest areas of the body (both shoulders, both hips, and then again between the hip bones at the crotch). When used with a tether the head excursion is reduced. Therefore there's less chance of impact injuries to the occupant and less chance of injury because the forces are divided by five, not three.

Europeans feel that boostering is better because the head and neck remain neutral together. Instead of having the body restrained and the head alone flinging forward, the head, neck, and upper back all move together. That way while there is more stress over the three points on the body instead of five, the head and neck are more protected. Yes, there's more head excursion, but the forces on the neck should be less.

The Europeans seem to be slightly right in that Dale Earnhardt was killed when his body was restrained and his head wasn't, which is why race car drivers now wear HANS devices. Conversely, we're not driving down the road at 220 mph, so who knows if those forces would translate to us in the car and maybe it'd be better to be harnessed, even without a HANS device.

Dr. Stewart Wang, a trauma surgeon at the University of Michigan was the keynote at KIM this year. He said that if he could, he would ride in a harness and he would have his family do the same. And he'd ride rear facing. The rear facing I get, there are studies that show it's far better. But the harnessing there aren't any studies, and unfortunately for his sample base, he only sees the kids who need a trauma surgeon. Not the ones who walked away with relatively minor or no injuries. So I'm taking his viewpoints with a grain of salt, since there is an automatic bias in his sample. But I thought I'd throw his viewpoint out as well.

What we do know is that after a crash, a child who is big enough for a booster, and mature enough for a booster, is well protected in either a booster or a harness.

Ask the instructors for their sources. Tell them you'd like to read that study, you're very interested, you've been wondering for a while, etc. Put it on them to prove what they've said. If they give you a study, please share it. I know I'd like to see it. But my guess is that there isn't one.

Wendy

The one thing we know for sure is that it's very difficult to be ejected from a [properly worn] 5-point harness. Of course you can still suffer a serious or fatal injury without being ejected but we know that serious and fatal injuries are more likely if you are partially or fully ejected.

If you consider only the most severe crashes - side impacts, roll-overs, vaults, multi-impact crashes, etc - then you are likely to really see the benefits of a 5-point harness compared with a 3-point lap/shoulder belt.