Size doesn't have much to do with safety, it's relative size that counts. Something big hits something small, everything else being equal, the small one will lose. The present popularity of pickups has to be a factor in vehicle safety. If we were all driving smaller cars instead of a mixture of small cars and behemoths like trucks and large SUV's, fatality rates would likely be lower.
I have a 66 Chrysler 300 convertible. It is as long as the 2001 Dodge 2500 I used to own and the hood is 2" wider than the bed of my present 2011 3500. It is also unquestionably the least safe car I have owned in the past 25 years.
When it was new I was driving one of those original Mini Coopers. Talk about being a midget in a land of giants.
