Safe transportation: tickets and seat selection

When purchasing an airline ticket sometimes we are offered the option of choosing a seat. In terms of safety, is it really true that "One seat is as safe as the other?" as Boeing Web site states, and that there is "just no way to say" to determine whether a seat is safer than another, as a Federal Aviation Administration spokesman said, and that "There is no safest seat?"

Not really. When looking at hard data about actual airline accidents we can conclude that the farther back you sit, the better your odds of survival.

Another common understanding is that airplane travel is the safest mean of transportation.

However, according to statistics by the National Safety Council, in the United States, train appears to be the safest transportation mode.
There were 0.96 deaths per 100 million miles traveled in a car, 0.06 deaths per 100 million miles traveled by commercial airlines and 0.04 deaths per 100 million miles traveled on railroads, including commuter trains.

It appears that that car is by far the less safe transportation method, more than 150 times more dangerous than flying by airplane.