There’s an argument against higher fuel economy that’s often dismissed by environmentalists, but resonates with a lot of people. The line of reasoning goes like this: small cars may be more fuel-efficient, but big cars are safer. If you took this to its logical conclusion, of course, we’d all be doing our car buying at Ed’s Used Monster Truck and Big Rig Emporium. But is this really a choice we have to make?

There is evidence to support the bigger-is-safer theory. When the National Research Council assessed the impact of federal fuel economy rules in 2002, they concluded that one of the downsides was auto safety. In the 1970s and 1980s, manufacturers had made cars smaller