Difference between 2010 Corolla and Pirus

In general, a larger vehicle will be safer in a vehicle-vehicle collision, thanks to the laws of physics. The larger vehicle will also have more room for crumple zones to crumple, which means less odds of something being pushed into a passenger and also allows less deceleration for the passenger as well.

But realistically, there are so many factors that add into the equation that this doesn't matter for most of us. Things like mileage and features matter. And size can also work to your disadvantage: if you have a car that is not as maneuverable, or is more likely to roll over, due to size, that's a problem. (I heard a story a year or two ago that many people bought big SUVs because they assumed they were safer, but traffic fatality statistics showed that they weren't. Turns out that they were safer in a collision, but were also much more likely to roll over in an emergency situation, which is a killer.)

Not to mention the type of accident: if a Yaris plows into the driver's door of a Prius, I'd me more worried about the Prius driver than the Yaris. But in a head-on collision, the Yaris driver has more to worry about.

My wife likes very small cars. She drives a Toyota Echo and would love to have a 2-door Yaris, or even a Smart Car. I am not comfortable with such small cars and the Prius is as small as I'd like to go. If a Prius and an Echo collide, the Echo is going to get the short end of the stick, but it's not such a big deal that we're going to have a family conflict over the Echo (or someday Yaris).

The OP's statement about safety is as ill-considered as the original post about cost. He's worried about "large trucks" on the highway. If "large trucks" means 18-wheelers, no car is going to have good odds if hit by an 18-wheeler. It's a matter of luck, not car safety, at that point. And how likely are collisions with 18-wheelers? Not likely at all. (Spectacular when it happens, but rare compared to the usual, garden-variety accidents that happen all around us.)

 

I hadn't seen this article when I posted the above: Worst Idea Ever: Toyota To Produce Prius For GM? | PriusChat

 

I'll have to it dig up again, but this sounds like a report published about 2001, regarding model year 1995-1999 vehicles. In multi-vehicle crashes, SUVs generally had slightly lower fatality rates for their own occupants than did cars, but more than made up for this with much higher fatality rates for non-occupants, i.e. occupants of the other vehicles, pedestrians, and bicyclists they tangled with. And SUV's higher single-vehicle fatality rate more than outweighed their multi-vehicle occupant savings.

Overall, SUVs increased the total highway carnage. A datapoint I remember is that an Explorer of those model years had a slightly higher occupant fatality rate than a Civic, and more than twice the non-occupant fatality rate of the Civic.

Pickups of that era were deadlier than cars and SUVs, to both occupants and non-occupants.

This study didn't address the new safety designs that began appearing in model year 2000. Crash safety has taken a great leap forward since the 1990s.