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Your intuition here is wrong. Probably the better way to think of it: in a car crash, would you rather be the person in the car or the pedestrian?

While I have never flown a plane nor parachuted, my understanding is that the maneuverability options of both are going to be roughly equivalent, so that either option will have roughly the same ability to choose the site of collision and (for small aircraft) even roughly the same speed at collision. And that makes the choice down to having a layer of metal that can absorb some of the impact for your versus having to be in the exactly correct position to absorb the impact energy best with your body.




Unless cars have ejection seats it's not the same comparison. Pedestrians in this case are potential hikers or people in the area.




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