I suspect this post might raise some hackles, so please read to the end before you reply.
If you compare the average person driving a small car to the average person driving an SUV, there is an insurmountable difference in crash survivability.
See the statistics on
this. Open that page up now. No amount of wishful thinking is going to stop the fact that small masses have large changes in velocity in collisions with large masses. In fact, for cars as light as mine, I think it would be stupid not to extrapolate and estimate the probability of death in a collision with virtually any vehicle as a certainty. If you think that the SMART car has much chance of surviving a collision with Silverado, please don't drive with other passengers.
However, note that these statistics are for the AVERAGE person who drives a small car. No one dies if you can avoid collisions. Just as you can exceed the EPA estimates of mpg by driving a certain way, so too can you lower the risk of having an accident on the highway through defensive driving.
Basically, if you are driving at a safe speed, in the day, on a dry road, with lots of distance between you and the next car, in a lane that's not expected to be going very fast, in a well maintained car, having had enough sleep, paying close attention to your mirrors and other people on the road, only changing lanes when you have scoped out everything well in advance (and not because someone has just braked ahead of you and you want to coast a bit longer)... guess what? The risk of you having an accident is minimal.
And note that all of this can go hand in hand with hypermiling. Perhaps there needs to be a defensive driving sticky. One thing that is very helpful is to check the weather before you drive. Most places these days have doppler radar available on the internet, with a loop so that you can judge when rain is heading through an area, and either delay or expedite a trip, or at the very least remind yourself to leave lots of room between you and the next car.