The Very Light Car is designed to be a highly efficient, very safe car. But an assumption many people make is that a small, lighter car is less safe and that a big, heavy SUV is more safe.
Wrong. In a 2004 New Yorker article Malcolm Gladwell completely demolishes, so to speak, this assumption. In Big and Bad: How the SUV ran over automobile safety he shows that while an SUV may be safer if you run head-on into something (“passive safety”), the problem is the trouble a heavy vehicle has in accident avoidance (“active safety”), ie, swerving and stopping. As he says, “The benefits of being nimble – of being in an automobile that’s capable of staying out of trouble – are in many cases greater than the benefits of being big.”
This concept is backed up by research: in An Analysis of Traffic Deaths by Vehicle Type and Model scientists from Michigan and Berkeley conclude “…utility vehicles (SUVs) are not necessarily safer for their drivers than cars; on average they are as risky as the average midsize or large car, and no safer than many of the most popular compact and subcompact models” and that “when one considers the combined risk, including those killed in the other vehicle in two-vehicle crashes, then the safest subcompact and compact models are actually safer than the average SUV”.
Perhaps the most interesting concept in Big and Bad is the importance of an awareness of your surroundings – and your own vulnerability – that comes with a small or normal-sized car, compared with the feeling of invulnerability an SUV conveys: “Jettas are safe because they make their drivers feel unsafe. S.U.V.s are unsafe because they make their drivers feel safe. That feeling of safety isn’t the solution; it’s the problem.”