But what you don't want to do is do this, where a big dog may tip you over.
Unless you enjoy being squashed, don't buy cars of much less than 3500 pounds, IMHO. And the IIHS makes a similar statement. The CEO of IIHS says something like this -- to lower auto injury buy bigger cars.
Don't fall for the five star stuff, it's against like cars colliding, typical government gobbley-gook, car against car, not crashing with that ten ton truck driven by the illegal speeding down the road on your side.