It's not really an unusual recommendation if you consider the physics involved in cornering.

If you're stuck in your driveway you'll want the better grip on the driven wheels, for sure. But being stuck in your driveway is not 'unsafe'. Spinning off the highway seems pretty damn unsafe to me, however, and I'll take 'stuck in the driveway' any day over doing 360s on the highway, smashing into guardrails, flying off the road, smashing in to trees/poles/etc because I couldn't hold on to the back end of the car.

I'm not the only one making this recommendation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__0DL8dE3Eo&NR=1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--Hb5kQCaTg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cBSWEhimdA

http://www.tirerack.com/tires/tiretech/techpage.jsp?techid=52

from wikipedia:

Current thinking stresses the desirability of keeping the best tires on the rear wheels of the vehicle, whether it is front, or rear wheel drive. The reason for this is that if the rear wheels lose grip before the front ones, an oversteer condition will occur, which is harder to control than the corresponding understeer which will happen if a front wheel is lost. This is also the case if a tire blows out, so the intuitive belief that the front steering/driving tires need to be the best quality is not actually the case.