Delica Canada | Mitsubishi Van Club

I agree with your points, and suspect you interpretation of the "answer" from ICBC is right - no liability in saying no. And I don't buy the "rear end collisions are more common" argument either, for the simple reason that for the most part, the vehicle you are in normally has forward momentum, and a lot of kinetic energy, all of which has to go somewhere. And accidents don't only occur between two vehicles, but sometimes with stationary objects.

I take a "do so at your own risk" approach to my middle seats.

For every rear ended collision on car is going forward! Unless you are backing up and you tend to do that slowly!

Just for the record and it might have been said already but
Sitting backwards isn't any safer than sitting frontwards
in relation to impact. Accidents generally have some side-to-side
twist etc to them. And the big impact for a major type of
injury is whiplash. It's not the initial jerk that gets you,
it's the recoil back and then the opposite direction.
You would still get this with a chair facing the other way.

Years as a RMT doing lots of accident related injuries for
SGI etc etc have shown me lots of strange and interesting things.

So for the record. Try to avoid accidents ;)

Firesong RMT ;)