The reality is that around 80-85% of pax survive air crashes, just not the ones who are far away from an exit.
10SS, you must be using a fairly broad definition of 'crash' to reach that conclusion.
Air Disaster's stats for 2007 show that 60-65% of pax
don't survive. What's more there are really two types of fatal accident - those where most (>90%) survive (e.g. the Airbus at Tegucigalpa) and those where <10% survive (e.g. the recent Spanair tragedy). In both these cases, it really doesn't matter where you're sitting - you're either going to be OK, or not. Accidents which lie between these two extremes are relatively unusual, and even in those events, there's no clear pattern as to whether front or back of the plane is safer (though sitting near an emergency exit should be a good thing).
My apologies for the depressing nature of this post - remember that it's still safer to cross the Atlantic than to cross the Cromwell Road (and the Heathrow coach drivers are under orders to make sure it stays that way
).
PV (lapsed actuary)