Abstract
Aviation's safety record continues to improve yearly, especially with respect to passenger and crew injuries and deaths. However, although the number of accidents has decreased over the decades, there are still many events, such as landings short of the runway and runway excursions, both of which pose threats to passenger and crew safety. Surviving any kind of aviation accident depends on the physiological threat and stress of the impact(s), the extent to which the physical structure surrounding the passengers and crew remains intact, and the ability of the passengers and crew to be able to escape the wreckage. The one action that both passengers and crew can carry out to help decrease the likelihood of crash-related injury or death is to assume an emergency brace position. Doing so has been demonstrated over several decades to improve survivability. While cabin crew are taught (and then might have to teach passengers in an emergency about the emergency brace position), passengers in many parts of the world never learn about the brace position unless they are involved in an emergency in which there is time to prepare for the landing. This lack of provision of information is related to the fact that most airlines do not provide information in the preflight safety briefing and some do not even provide the information in the passenger safety cards. Many countries do not require their airlines to do so, a fact, which in turn, is related to the lack of mention of the brace position in ICAO's Annex 6. Until standards and recommended practices are changed at the highest world level, passengers will continue to be deprived of this vital, life-saving information that they can use, potentially to help save their own lives.