Any idiot can see a 2022 ford truck is better than being hit by my 1988 Saab, which a 4 year old is visible over the hood on, as compared to a ford, which, I think I probably couldn't see my wife over the hood.
That's an ironman, mate. Pedestrian safety is a huge part of modern safety regulations for vehicles. It's why the Mini stopped being mini. Between that and side impact standards they couldn't keep that low hood and door sills.
I drove a Triumph Spitfire for a while. Any time I took it out of town I took the state highways or country roads, because not only would that thing fit under a truck trailer, at a stoplight I could reach out and touch the bumper on most vehicles. Anything bigger than a sedan and I had to reach -up- to do it. I was only ever safe in that vehicle in the same way that motorcyclists are safe - constant vigilance and pre-planning, which I learned as a bicyclist.
I looked on IIHS for the ford F-150 and it gives a green rating for the pedestrian safety. On further inspection, this is because there is a type of automatic braking. Now, I am happy to have that system, but that doesn't have much to do with the shape of the car at all.
The issue isn't just that cars have gotten bigger (we could compare an 80s, 90's, 20's, 2010's civic to see this through one line) but also the trend towards more SUV, XUV and Trucks being sold compared to cars.
Mechanical controls are safety-related - it's harder and more expensive to engineer a crash-safe interior with knobs and such. That's why with modern crash testing you saw a very rapid depreciation of pull-out knobs and the like. It's also harder to manufacture and repair. Electronic controls? You run power and a data bus to the unit, and you're done.
I don't think people understand how much engineering goes into a dash/interior in a passenger car, at least from a company that prioritizes crash safety. Everything is designed to give just the right amount when hit by a body flying around in crash. Even the lower part of the dash is designed to crush just the right amount if you "submarine" in a head-on crash - enough to stop you, but not enough to shatter your knees.
On the other hand, there will be fewer crashes due to the driver having to take his/her eyes of the road in order to squint at which identical button out of 25 turns the blower down one notch.
Were there fewer crashes when these cars were the norm? No. [1,2,3,4]
The number of crashes per year has remained remarkably stable year over year, despite the number of driven miles and number of cars rising enormously. Conversely the number of fatalities due to crashes has dropped considerably.
So despite driving many, many more miles then they did previously, people aren't dying in crashes at a greater rate (total crashes is harder to track due to intermittent and inconsistent reporting data).
One of the contributor to low fatalities-per-mile was congestion, my guess is that while miles driven per year increased every year average/median driving speed decreased due to traffic up to 2020 when congestion decreased for the first time.
