And we all have friends who regularly avoid accidents in motorcycles. The difference is that you HAVE to avoid an accident to survive them, especially for motorcyclists (the extreme case of smallest but most agile vehicle). While if you're in a big car, you can have an accident and survive.
Its a very big difference. If you ever are a bit tired or distracted, the "trust my reactions to save me" technique will fail.
But if you're tired / distracted, but armored up in a 5000lb or 6000lb vehicle, you'll probably survive whatever hits you.
The survival rate of 18-wheelers (even when they're distracted and tired from driving 10+ hours a day) is quite high. Multi-ton armor just makes things safer.
You're heavier than the cars around you which helps a lot, but the extra weight also smashes through a lot of obstacles.
As in driving aggressively and avoiding accidents they were about to create ? Statistically most accidents are rear ends and side collisions, both of which you most likely won't see coming with enough time to react let alone move your car. And getting plowed by an SUV when you're sitting in a sport car means your head is on the absolute worst position you could think of.
Bikers say the same "I'm small, agile and fast, no accidents for me", yet they're disproportionally represented in crash stats.
Again, with the biker statement, since you'll never find a data set that would show accidents avoided on the particular vehicle there's a huge swath of underrepresentation of the reality. And one can argue proportionally bikers are in more crashes because there are less of them overall on top of the fact that most drivers of cars and trucks do not pay considerate attention to smaller vehicles.
And finally my comment about the "friends with fast cars" was a tongue in cheek response to the fact that the parent I was replying to made a large jump by saying SUVs are safer because of size and weight.
Or you know, not being on distracted autopilot: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jul/01/tesla-dri...
People get distracted, and when they're distracted they'll crash into things.
An alternative solution is "don't be distracted", but that doesn't seem to work in practice.
As an aside I have lots of friends who own fast cars who haven't gotten into accidents by avoiding them. Thankfully they were driving lighter vehicles.
I won't berate survivorship bias here.