You sit higher up, so if you hit a large animal, like a moose, you don't risk it coming through the windshield. Having anywhere from 300-700kg coming through yo

You sit higher up, so if you hit a large animal, like a moose, you don't risk it coming through the windshield. Having anywhere from 300-700kg coming through your windshield is going to hurt you. But that assumes you hit it. But like you said, you also run the risk of flipping the car. It would be interesting to see some actual data on this. It's the sort of thing that has been repeated so much that it's easy to make bad assumptions. Anecdotally, I've almost hit a moose two times. Both times I just completely froze up and slammed the breaks. They jumped out of nowhere, the only reason I didn't hit any of them was just pure luck and timing, and had nothing to do with my ability to react or steer away.