I think I can throw some light on this one. (Sorry, no references. I read about this, but can’tremember where.) Some time years ago, the US air force tried to f

I think I can throw some light on this one. (Sorry, no references. I read about this, but can’tremember where.) Some time years ago, the US air force tried to find out, using statistics, how to design cockpits to fit most pilots. So they did multiple measurements on many people; upper and lower arm lengths, ditto for legs, back lengths, etc. Then they took the average of each measurement and designed cockpits to fit pilots of average size, allowing for some variation, of course. As it turned out, almost every pilot was much more than a standard deviation from the mean in some dimension, so these cockpits actually fit practically no one – resulting in a too high rate of (near) accidents. I am not sure how they overcame the problem, but IIRC, part of the solution involved designing for the exact measurements not being quite so critical.