[rbanffy]

> Its not at all far fetched to assume if the plane suddenly rolled at its maximum rate that it would pull the pilot's spine apart.

The pilot sits very close to the roll axis of the plane. I find it hard to believe just rolling very fast would seriously hurt the pilot unless the plane could roll insanely fast. A pilot can really hurt him/herself by doing severe pitch and yaw changes, but I don't believe the g-loads (and the g gradient) during roll would be that high.