[djaychela]

Your position seems to have changed - you were initially saying that safety wasn't improving, and cars of 20 years ago were safe enough. Which is patently untrue.

Now you're saying that the issue is that car weights have increased.

That's a different argument - and the links that you cite aren't making the exact point that you are - the 1000lbs/47% figure may well be true, but that's a difference over 30 years, and both papers are actually talking about inequality between colliding vehicles.

The tendency to drive SUVs is an issue, for sure, and if you're in a little car then you don't want to have an accident with a large one where there is a physical incompatibility, but like all things it has become an arms race - I wouldn't want to be in a small car of yesteryear on the roads today because everything modern is bigger - so it's no wonder that people are driving them, as no-one wants to be in the small vehicle that will come off worst in an accident.

Your last few fatalities you witnessed are tragic, but anecdotal. I've seen many situations where people have walked away from accidents that would have killed them 20 years ago - indeed a couple of weeks ago I witnessed a car get T-boned by a good vehicle on an A-road in the UK, and everyone got out and walked away - that certainly wouldn't have happened 20 or more years ago. The statistics for fatalities in the UK (the only country I have checked) don't align with your statement that lethality is rising - it isn't in the UK.