I recently drove a European mini-van through Paris and it was a very tight squeeze... some streets were too narrow, and in one case a moped was parked 6" beyond the designated zone, which made the street impassible for me.

It was quite a fun experience, but in the future I'll rent a smaller vehicle.

Larger vehicles have larger crumple zones and more steel all around. Are you saying larger vehicles are no safer than smaller ones? This runs counter to decades of conventional wisdom based on thousands of crash tests. See Edmunds, Consumer Reports, and other reputable organizations for corroboration of this.

Here's some numbers that establish that larger vehicles are generally safer:

http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/driver-death-rates

Compare the death rates of small, tiny, and midsize sedans (2011 data is the latest).

Then look at large SUVs. Huge difference. "All vehicles" = 28. Most of the large SUVs are single digits, most of the smaller cars are well above 28.

Curiously, Ford Expedition 2WD is above average and is an exception. I would love to understand why because it's a huge vehicle. The Ford Expedition 4WD is way at the other end, 5 deaths. Perhaps it has something to do with how people drive, or some flaw in how it handles.

Most trucks are pretty safe, but the Ford F-150 4WD has above average death rates, and is the most popular single model of pickup truck. I wonder if this is because lots of people buy this truck who don't really know how to drive a truck.

Anyway, some interesting data to explore there. Although as I pointed out, there are some outliers, in general the data lines up with the contention that larger vehicles are safer.

>Most trucks are pretty safe, but the Ford F-150 4WD has above average death rates, and is the most popular single model of pickup truck. I wonder if this is because lots of people buy this truck who don't really know how to drive a truck.

No, it's probably because it's a truck with a body-on-frame chassis instead of a unibody chassis like any modern vehicle, and was designed for towing and load-hauling rather than crash protection. If you want crash protection, you need to buy a vehicle with a modern chassis that was expressly designed for it. Same goes for the Expedition. And yes, handling could be a factor too: these vehicles have horrible handling and can't avoid accidents the way a good-handling vehicle can, and will frequently roll over.

I don't believe any American car will roll over in normal driving. They will skid. Unless a tire catches on a curb or something. So in normal highway driving rollover is very unlikely.

Not true: trucks and SUVs absolutely will roll over. They even have warnings when there's high winds about it, because they can be blown over.

And just try doing a panic turn (to avoid something) in a tall SUV and see what happens.

You can't just ignore the laws of physics. Center-of-gravity is an important thing.

I see from Consumer Reports that tipping does sometimes happen. And not just from 'tripping'.

http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/2012/02/rollover-101/inde...

I still think there is a need to normalize for the amount each vehicle is driven - so that it is deaths/injuries per mile driven not per time period.