For handling rapid deceleration, I think you’d be best off with seats facing the rear. A cushioned seat can distribute force much more evenly than a seatbelt when the car stops suddenly and your inertia wants to keep you going, and the backs could be reinforced to block anything coming into the passenger compartment from the collision. Hard to do that with a windshield.
After the crash is where I'd be concerned. While the windshield has a lot of negatives, one positive is that it's relatively easy to break and pull someone out of the car in a crash.
IDK, probably still safer, but it's something that'd deserve some aggressive crash tests to make sure we aren't making a pinto mistake.
Are a significant number of traffic fatalities currently avoided by pulling people out of vehicles through broken windshields? That seems a little overspecific to me. In fact, rear-facing seats are absolutely known to be safer (c.f. infant car seats), given that in all collisions one vehicle is almost by definition decelerating along its forward axis.
I would be unable to sit in such a vehicle at all, then. I must face forward and clearly see the horizon or I throw up in a matter of minutes in any moving vehicle.
