You are completely wrong. Even the crappiest, cheapest car in the US sold today is FAR safer than the largest, most expensive car of 20 years, 30 years, 40 years, 50 years, any number of years that you want ago. Everyone seems to forget that those “big cars” of the 50’s and 60’s were mostly air - no side beams in the doors, two sheets of metal about as thick as that on a refrigerator door between you and someone blowing a red light at 50 MPH. Single brake fluid circuits - any leak would cause a total loss of braking. Non-collapsible steering columns that would impale the driver when the steering wheel bent. Metal dashboards that would kill the occupants by splitting their heads open (but the good news was that the CAR could be repaired)! Non-laminated glass that would neatly decapitate the occupants as their heads went through the windshield (no seat belts to hold them back). I could go on. Cars are designed to be sacrificial these days. Repairing or replacing (the financial value of) a person costs society and insurance companies MUCH more.
I also think that “old timers” have very fuzzy memories about how much maintenance and repair that older cars took as opposed to today’s cars. I will grant that the maintenance was potentially easier to do, but tuning up a car every 6-12000 miles was not unusual at all 40 years ago. For example, if you really wanted your car to run well back then, you adjusted and cleaned your car’s ignition points every 3000 miles.
I've seen older cars laying on their top without hardly a dent and the drivers usually unharmed and the top intact. I could jump up and down on many of todays cars and bend in the roof. Remember when a crowd of kids could sit on the hood? I could walk across the hood of the older ones.
As for repair and maintenance cost? Don't even go there You Loose. At age 16 I could do all my own repair work be it replacing clutch or an engine overhaul. My ex-father in law who was a mechanic on trucks till his retirement won't touch the newer cars of today. If you don't have the computer you can't do Zilch. If you don't have the special tools same thing. I know after the crank positioning sensor on our van failed leaving me and my wife stranded in a very bad stretch of two land highway in the middle of it as I was making a turn. By stranded I mean just that unable to exit the vehicle. The cost to fix it was considerable just like it cost $1000 now to get a water pump changed that used to cost $25-$30 part and was a 1-2 hour job for the average man. Next is in tank fuel pumps same thing. A $30 part and 30 minutes work became a $300-$500 plus part and means emptying the tank as well. IOW for most persons another trip too the shop.
Re read my later post. The older cars with antilock brakes, seatbelts and airbags would offer better protection. Also somewhere in the mid 60's car went to dual brake cylinders. But there was several ways to stop if brakes failed including the emergency brake or gearing down. For that matter on a straight shift you could cut the engine in gear. Do that now and see what happens. You lock the steering wheel. Gee that blunder took a rocket scientist.
People got hurt years ago mostly because the interstates weren't finished and traffic was often on two lane highways at 50-55 MPH. IOW head on collisions. In my end of my state that was two laned highways going through ridges and mountains.
Now if a car engine quits while vehicle in motion you loose power steering and power brakes if you let up just once on the brakes. The older ignition systems generally did not completely fail all at once. If it did you still had brakes and steering that even my 4'10 95 pound wife when she was able too drive could have stopped easily and safely. I changed plugs and points every 12,000 miles about the same as the ones last now. To get a spark plug out of some engines also is a trip to the shop. I don't know about you but I don't have thet kind of money.