AK Dad
New member
I never imagined hitting a soft seat back regardless of the crash force causing any real serious damage
That's one of the things that becomes less obvious as G-forces increase. At a certain amount of force "soft" no longer does any good because, depending on the properties of the materials, it compresses too quickly and essentially acts as though it's not there. What you get then is nearly equivalent to direct contact with hard structures within the seat, like the metal frame for instance.
In the early days of ejection seats in fighter aircraft they were finding a lot of guys with real-world spinal injuries that were not predicted by testing. What they found thru investigation was that a lot of pilots were adding their own extra seat cushions because the ejection seat cushions were so uncomfortable. What the pilots didn't seem to realize was that the seat cushions were so thin and uncomfortable because you couldn't have too much cushion that allowed the seat to accelerate prior "hitting" the pilot in the rear-end.
Hope that didn't seem too far off topic, but that's part of the reason that having things like heavy coats or loose installs can lead to injuries in CRs.