A point which arises, concerning the issue of "is the front or back of the train, safer?" -- quite often on passenger runs of a significant distance, the configuration of lines / routes means that at some point(s) the train will reverse direction: so that if one was previously in the front part of it, one will then be in the back part, and vice versa. (Responding by moving to the "opposite-end" part of the train when a reversal took place, would I think generally be seen as safety-questing taken to the point of lunacy.)
"This thing's being thus" was brought to my notice in a thread in "Railway History and Nostalgia" here a few years back, originally on the subject of steam heating; which topic-drifted into "front or back safety-wise", by my posting on something I had heard, concerning South Africa's railways in the era of apartheid. There and then, the general practice was -- subject to circumstances -- to marshal the coaches for Black passengers in the leading part of the train, and those for White ones in the rear. The source where I came across this: continued, to the effect that the South African railways had set up this convention because it was hypothesised that in railway accidents it was more often the train's front vehicles which suffered, than the rear ones; plus, the noise of the steam loco disturbing people's sleep, etc., would affect those in the front coaches, more than those further back -- so, with all this in mind: travellers in the category deemed less valuable, were put in the front.
A poster on that thread responded with a reminder about the "reversing" factor -- whereby on some routes for some of the time and distance, the front of the train would become the rear, and the other way about: obvious when one considers it, but which had never previously occurred to me, for one. So with this "South Africa in the bad old days" thing: the practice may have obtained -- but the cynical rationale given for it, as above, would appear to belong in the "urban legends" department.