Which event most strongly correlates with the highest potential for death or serious injury in a motor vehicle crash?

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Being inside a vehicle and restrained distributes the crash energy and protects the occupant. When someone is ejected, there is no restraint or protective interior to cushion the motion, so the body is directly exposed to the road, debris, other vehicles, and extreme deceleration. This leads to high-energy injuries to the head, chest, abdomen, and spine and markedly increases the chance of death or severe injury. Other patterns like down-and-under, up-and-over, or lateral compression do occur inside the vehicle and protections such as seat belts and airbags can reduce their severity, but they do not remove the protective barriers entirely. Ejection removes those protections altogether, making it the event most strongly linked with fatal or life‑threatening injuries.