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This is an important idea in performance vehicle design - in a crash, the 'capsule' around the occupant must not be compromised. You see this pretty vividly in bad F1 crashes. Granted, those vehicles are so weight optimized that they'll lose a wheel if they tap a kerb, but in particularly bad wrecks you'll see that the entire car, aside from the capsule has pretty much disintegrated.

example: Fendando Alonso's 2016 crash. Looking at photos, the car had been reduced to a capsule with a bit of engine and wheel sticking off of it. Alonso climbed out of the cockpit himself.