Amen. During the past few decades, the Detroit mantra has been "The more metal, the more margin."

Increase in weight may have been a factor in the early-to-late seventies when the first bumbling steps toward safety were taken, but in the intervening years, structural design innovations and new materials would have made it possible for Detroit to cut weight and maintain safety. You need only notice that we do have light cars on the road that meet safety ratings to see this.

However, Detroit found it much more profitable to sell massive amounts of metal to drag along under Bob Suburbia's ass, so they got to promoting that the vehicles were safer and more luxurious, with the unpublicized benefit of giving them more profits.

In reality, larger vehicles are not inherently that much safer than smaller vehicles, except when you increase the aggregate quantity of larger vehicles. Then, oddly enough, the probability that two vehicles with a significant weight differential increases and the safety of the small vehicle decreases, not because of anything inherent in the small vehicle, but because of systemic risk of collision with a vehicle of larger weight increases. So while Detroit has touting safety in the individual vehicle, systemically, it has been lowering safety by increasing the spread of vehicle weights. But it is more profitable, so all is well...