Comment by lconnell962

The answer you get will depend on how much a person has to travel or has traveled in the US. If someone lives, works, and never travels outside (for example) a 100 KM radius then what they do every day will play a big part. Frequent road travel for work, family, or other reasons probably will look towards the smallest or most efficiant car that can fit their need.

The average weather pattern of the region a person lives in plays a part, the amount of public transportation avaliable plays a part, how densely packed cities near you are plays a part. What car is avaliable is obviously a big part. All that stuff will be probably be considered before the "overall safety" of the car you want (and can afford) to get.

The people who can afford to think about safety will most likely be considering "passanger safety" rather than at the societial level. The more big cars around them the more someone concerned about safety will feel the need to own and drive in a big car. Sometimes you need the bigger car for the larger range a bigger gas tank allows. There are still places where you can find around 400 km between gas stations, especially if you are driving outside normal buisness hours.

One topic for the American car market has been how the "mid-sized" or "mid-range value" car space has been vanishing. That the options are increasingly moving towards either minimal passanger/storage Eco-Cars or the larger Trucks and SUVs. That plays a part, the used car market plays a part, and other world events play a part.

So at least from one point of view here all that leads to a lot of topics like this where there are people who have only lived in the US (and often not even moved around to other parts of the US) pushing their world view on others. You also have people who "have been to the US" claiming qualified expertiese based off their point(s) of reference, valid or not. The "US needs better public transportation" crowd will usually come out as well with sometimes more militant views against car use and ownership.

But all this circles back to the idea that the "normal American" has time to think about this or try to act on any of this. Some do, some don't, most won't really think about this unless a headline prompts something from their brain. The hard thing for the "normal European" to understand is the economics of distance and scale at play in the US given just how much space between cities and towns there can be.

People can blame the "American Dream" or the auto-industry, or whatever else you might want to imagine has contributed to the damage done in the last century of road construction and sprawl. The end result is that most Americans don't have a choice but to own a car, and may be far too tired to be trusted at the wheel of a vehicle. Multiple people driving less than a few miles to work may be involved in an accident with someone who had driven hundreds. Miles driven in a year is part of insurance calculations for a reason.

This was much more comment than I intended to give.