It would already make a huge difference if safety ratings took into account people outside the vehicle. If a car is essentially guaranteed to kill the occupants

It would already make a huge difference if safety ratings took into account people outside the vehicle. If a car is essentially guaranteed to kill the occupants of the other vehicle, the cyclist or the pedestrian, it shouldn't get a high safety rating just because its occupants are unharmed - it's still a dangerous murder machine after all. Right now the US seems to be stuck in a spiral of ever-increasing vehicle size. People look at the larger vehicles around them and they feel unsafe so they buy a larger vehicle - which makes everyone else buy even larger vehicles. The irony is that everyone would be far safer if we all stuck to properly-sized vehicles, because those huge vehicles result in way higher energy collisions.