Insurance Institute for Highway Safety

Not one GM or Stellantis vehicle on the list, meanwhile Ford/Lincoln has several. Interesting! More on reddit.com

For vehicles that weigh less than the fleet average, the risk that occupants will be killed in a crash decreases substantially for every 500 pounds of additional weight. But those benefits top out quickly. For vehicles that weigh more than the fleet average, there’s hardly any decrease in risk for occupants associated with additional poundage. The average weight of passenger vehicles in the study sample was 4,000 pounds. The weight of the average U.S. car increased to 3,308 pounds in 2017-22 from 3,277 pounds in the earlier period, bringing the category closer to the 4,000-pound all-vehicle average. So a CUV that is 500-1k lbs over still substantially increases safety? its just diminishing returns with 7k lbs trucks? More on reddit.com

https://jalopnik.com/small-suv-crash-avoidance-tech-does-not-keep-small-su-1851435561 This might help. "The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety tested 10 of the most popular small crossovers on the market and found that just one of them earned a “good” rating when it comes to vehicle-to-vehicle crash prevention." I’ll save the anticipation for you folks. The Forester was the only one to get a “good” rating. The CR-V and RAV4 were rated “acceptable.” The Escape, Tucson and Compass earned a “marginal” rating. Unfortunately for their drivers and everyone else on the road, the Equinox, CX-5, Outlander and Taos all got “poor” markings. It’s a tough look. More on reddit.com

If a car is in a single vehicle accident, i.e. crashing into a stationary object, then you can compare across classes for objective crash worthiness, but things get a lot more difficult when two cars of different size classes collide. At that point, better safety design still plays a role, but the physics involved likely make a bigger difference. In terms of death rates, I think there are way too many variables to take into account to make any real statements about which is statistically safer. As you said, driver habits are going to come into play more than objective metrics. More on reddit.com