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I bought a Mazda B3000 pickup, nearly the same as the Ford Ranger (actually built by Ford, but sold by Mazda) and am alive because of it.

I was in a head on accident in January of 2008. The bigger car meant that I wasn’t decelerated so fast. The other driver was going over 70 miles an hour. I was stopped, waiting to take a left turn. He had 30 feet of rubber left in the road leading up to the impact.

With lighter and smaller cars you get better gas mileage. You also get higher death rates from accidents.

An example: Take a basketball and a tennis ball. Old each out at arm’s length, with the tennis ball on top of the basket ball. Drop them. The momentum of the Basketball will go into the tennis ball with a nearly elastic collision. Do this outside kids.

In an accident the change in momentum is not elastic, but rather it does work on your car and on you. A bigger car is safer for its occupants.

My husband was in a head-on too, July 1999. He was in a 1990 or '91 Mercury Topaz that saved his life. Also stopped making a left turn, rear-ended and pushed into oncoming traffic in the opposite lane. Hit by a station wagon, thrown into an oncoming Chevy Tahoe. He was then stuck in the car for 45 minutes with live wires across the car from the telephone pole that the Tahoe took out after hitting my husband head-on. My husband received a broken knee (torn lateral meniscus and tibia fracture to be precise :)) and was out of work for 8 months. One sort of funny part, but definitely not to him at the time, was when his car had finally come to a stop after the rear hit and then the head-on that had turned the car around, he tried to look at himself in the rear-view mirror and could not see himself. The mirror had fallen to the floor but he thought he couldn't see himself because he must have been dead. He also later had a pulmonary embolism in the hospital which was another scarey time for him, again he thought he was dying. He even later, at home recuperating, had the first of a couple of anxiety attacks and thought he was dying of a heart attack. It was a really scarey time for him the whole ordeal. Here are some pics of his wreck:~~~

and the b*tch that hit him...

oh yeah, he would surely buy one of Obama's Government Motors boxcars...NOT!

"With lighter and smaller cars you get better gas mileage. You also get higher death rates from accidents."

And, IMHO the American people believe their safety is as important or of greater importance than fuel economy. So, why don't conservative organizations develop a new web-based interactive index called the "Family Safety and Fuel Economy" FAMEC (Family,Economy).

The FAMEC Index would give a rating for a vehicle based on screen input by the BUYER, who would simply indicate (on a 1-10 scale) THE BUYERS person value of both Safety and Fuel Economy. An overall value for each vehicle, based on a value of 5 for each parameter would be the "sticker" value. Conservative lawmakers could call for a law making the display of this FAMEC number mandatory on new car window stickers. Comments please!

“With lighter and smaller cars you get better gas mileage. You also get higher death rates from accidents.”

Quite so. I saw a heavy Cadillac hit a small Japanese car in the rear and the lighter car burst into flames. The poor driver escaped but not before being terribly burned.

And I turned a few tin boxes into scrap with a armored tank known as a ‘75 LTD.