Usually part of a back seat brief includes very strong admonishment to keep your booger hooks away from the black and yellow striped handles or else you will find yourself suddenly in the air without an airplane surrounding your soft, squishy bits. This was just a lot of lax procedures piled on stupidity compounded by a faulty ejection seat for the pilot (a good thing in retrospect), not so good if you really needed to leave your burning aircraft.
Seats are hot or safe, there is no in between. Also, most two (or more seaters) have the option of Command ejection, one person pulls the leave now handle and everyone leaves or single where each person is responsible for getting themselves out. From what I remember they almost always fly in Command mode so if one person is incapacitated the other can get everyone out.
For the record I have only flown in two ejection seat types, an F4 and an EA6B, I had no misunderstanding at all about the function of the striped handles and under no circumstances were my hands to get anywhere near them.
bob