Apparently I'm out of date -- SUVs and Pickups stopped dominating the death rates in the mid-2000s. Still, the fourfold decrease in fatality rates across the t

Apparently I'm out of date -- SUVs and Pickups stopped dominating the death rates in the mid-2000s. Still, the fourfold decrease in fatality rates across the ten model-years the IIHS publishes (coinciding with a substantial increase in the share of vehicle-years for 'mini' sized vehicles) completely discredits the "balance of mass" theory of car fatalities. The stats that article links say that the 2011 mini cooper has driver fatality numbers that would have made it among the safest cars on the road in 2002. Eyeball regression says newer and pricier can explain essentially all of the safety differences, and vehicle size is at best a distant third. http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/driver-death-rates http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/driver-death-rates