[Aerkuld]

The damage to an occupant in an imapct is due to the rate of change of velocity, otherwise known as acceleration. Of course we are talking about a negative acceleration here. You will ofter hear in an accident, particularly in racing cars because they have instruments to record this data, of a XXX 'g' impact. You know that 1g is the acceleration due to gravity which has a value of 9.81 m/s^2. The higher the negative decleration in an accident the greater the damage to a person in the accident due to the increased gravitational force acting on their body. It stands to reason that the negative acceleration will be lower if the imapct energy is absorbed slowly. This is what a modern car with a imapct safety system is designed to do. It takes the energy that the car has and distributes as much of it as possible over as long a time as possible, hence lower negative acceletation. A Ford Galaxy was never designed to do this. If it hits something it will stop very quickly, resulting in a very high negative acceleration and more damage to the occupants.
Now I know your next course of argument is going to be based on "...when the big car hits the little car". In this instance I suggest you find some data on fatal accident statistics*. You will see that a large majority of fatal accidents are single vehicle accidents and do not involve an imapct with another vehicle. Even with this information you may also want to think about the possibility of a big car hitting another big car. The truth is the smaller car is safer and not just for the occupants of the small car!

Please correct me if I have made any whopping errors in this explanation.


*I posted something about this in another thread. I'll see if I can find it.