There is e.g. [1], which puts the EU-27 at about 4 times safer than the US.
As for European light trainsets not surviving collisions with freight trains: trains generally don't fare well in high speed collisions. And at low speed collisions European commuter trains (something like [2]) would be doing fine, meanwhile light rail (like [3]) isn't designed to collide with anything heavier than a truck. I don't think anybody in Europe runs freight trains on shared tracks with light rail.