Did you ever read Nevil Shute's "No Highway"?
No, although I am vaguely aware of the story line...I might get round to reading sometime because it sounds quite interesting.
One recent issue with forward-facing seats that has passed the CAA by (as so much seems to do nowadays, apart from my taxes and fees to pay for their lifestyle) is the installation of in-flight entertainment boxes beneath seats, right where pax legs/feet are and will be bounced around during any collision. I cannot believe how aluminium boxes with sharp edges and ridiculously sharp corners have been allowed to be fixed right alongside where people's lower limbs are. In a car design this would make it illegal in a second.
Indeed, rather worrying. One of survivors of the 1997 Korean Air crash (who was also a helicopter pilot) reckoned that the bad seat design broke his leg...meaning of course he struggled to exit the burning plane. Such an easy thing to fix I suspect but does that much thought go into seat design? I don't know. I know a lot of thought went into the seat design of our Volvo (from a safety point of view)...but for a plane perhaps people don't think these things matter much. I mean fair enough, a lot of crashes involve just such high forces that none of this really matters...but in terms of those more 'controlled' crashes safety could really be improved I think.