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Now that gas pricies are soaring, people are looking more towards small gas-saving vehicles. The surge in interest should also include reviewing the safety factors in traveling in these smaller vehicles.

Since the last oil shock of the 70's, auto makers have made smaller cars much safer, and statistics do show that smaller cars are now more protective. The smaller cars are designed with more protective features, such as side air bags. They are also being designed to disperse energy generated by a crash away from the passenger compartment, and they are using more new materials, such as high strength steel, to reinforce the sides.

As a result, the death rate for drivers of the smallest cars dropped 35% over the last decade as of 2006. Of course that's not to say that traveling in bigger auto's still isn't safer. That is just the law of physics. Bigger and heavier is just safer in a collision. While today's small cars are safer than earlier models, the risk of dying in the smallest car relative to the largest car is still 2 to 1.

The key theme to consider is that you must not try to sacrafice to much safety just to save money on gas. If you do enough reseach, (mostly online), you can find yourself a well designed small car that is safe on a relative basis to many others. In fact, today 14 of the 17 top-selling small cars get good frontal crash test ratings from the IIHS. In 1997, none of the top-selling small cars earned a good rating.  
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It's 2008, and you're quoting IIHS scores from 1997? It's a total myth that SUVs are safer than small cars.