9 ways to stay alive when the worst happens

The followings are copied from PARADE (Jan 11, 2009). I am not sure if these arguments (or suggestions) have any scientific merit, but I copy here just for fun.

1. Escape a plane crash
   The safest seats on a plane are within five rows of any exit. The No. 1 safest seats are in an exit row or one row away.
2. Get out of a hotel five
   Most fire departments use ladders that, at their maximum, can extend around 80 feets into the air. That means in order to be able to climb out of your building's window and onto a truck's ladder, you should be on or below the seventh floor.
3. Leave the hospital alive
   If you need to go to the hospital, weekdays are much safer than weekends. Possible explanatoins are, during the weekends, there are lower staffing levels and the presence of workers who are less experienced and less familiar with procedures and patients.
4. Don't bo back to hospital
   beware of checking out of the hospital on a Friday. Friday is the most common hospital discharge day, but the individuals released on Friday also have an increased readmissions rate to hospital.
5. Get an initial boost
   In one intriguing study, California researchers analyzed death records to find out whether there was any correlation between people's initials and how long they lived. They divided their subjects' initials into positive and negative groups. The good-initial group included ACE, WIN, WOW, and VIP; the bad contained RAT, BUM, SAD, and DUD. They matched up initials with lifespans and looed for any correlation. The results were stunning (and also hotly debated): a person's initial actually may influence the time and cause of his or her death. "A symbol as simple as one's initials can add four years to life or subtract three years"
   In related news, last names that begin with letters occurring later in the alphabet can be associated with a phenomenon that Scotish researchers call "alphabetical prejudice." They found that when medical teams in a brain-injury rehabilitation center met to discuss patients, people with surnames that came early in the alphabet tended to receive three to four minutes' more attention than people with names later in the alphabet.
6. Outlive a heart attack
   One of the best places to be is in a casino in Las Vegas. The heart-attack survival rate in Las Vegas is 53%. Compare that to rates of 16% in Seattle (which has some of the nation's best response systems) or 2% in Chicago.
7. Walk away rom a car accideng
   The rear middle seat was 16% safer than any other place in the vehicle. Overall, riding in the back is 59% to 86% safer than riding in the front, and riding on the hump is 25% safer than riding in the rear window seats.
   Compared with white cars in daylight ours, black cars had a 12% higher crash risk; gray, 11%; silver, 10%; blue and red, 7%. At dawn or dusk, black cars had a 47% higher crash risk than white cars; gray, 25%; silver 15%.
8. Cross the street safely
   The three deadliest days for pedestrians are Jan 1, Dec 23, and Oct 31.
9. Beware of your birthday
   Women are more likely to die in the week after their birthdays than any other week of the year, while mean's deaths peak before their birthdays.