You can’t get around physics. More mass with more force carries more risk.
Basically light duty trucks take an extra 10-30 feet stopping from 60 MPH. This is dwarfed by distance travelled during reaction time. In the 1960's sedans were in the ~150 ft range for 60-0, about what modern pickups achieve.
Heavier vehicles have more kinetic energy at the same speed but the braking force for all vehicles is proportional to mass and friction with the road surface which depends on tire quality and road material, and since acceleration is proportional to mass from a given force the deceleration from braking is basically the same at any mass with equivalent tires and road surface.
Obviously heavier cars are more deadly when hitting people with all the other variables fixed, but not all these variables are independent. They could also depend on the weight of the cars. For example, maybe the car becomes easier to control/steer when it's heavier (totally made up point), which counters the inherent risk introduced by the weight.
Without real-world data I won't be too quick to say heavier car is more dangerous.
I'll post the conclusion for the light trucks weight reduction part (fatalities part, there is also non-serious injuries part in the paper) here as TL;DR for other people.
Reducing the mass of light trucks would significantly increase the fatality risk of their occupants in
collisions with objects and big trucks. But downsizing of light trucks would significantly reduce risk
to pedestrians, motorcyclists and, above all, passenger car occupants. There would be little effect
on rollovers because, historically, there has been little correlation between the mass of light trucks
and their rollover stability (width relative to center-of-gravity height). There would also be little
change in collisions between two light trucks, if both trucks are reduced in mass.
Even though the effect of mass reductions is statistically significant in four of the six types of
crashes, the net effect for all types of crashes combined is small, because some of the individual
effects are positive and others are negative. The benefits of truck downsizing for pedestrians and
car occupants could more than offset the fatality increase for light truck occupants. It is estimated
that a 100-pound reduction could result in a modest net savings of 40 lives, (0.26 percent of baseline
fatalities). However, this estimate is not statistically significant, the 2-sigma confidence bounds
range from a savings of 100 to an increase of 20 fatalities; the 3-sigma bounds range from a savings
of 130 to an increase of 50 fatalities. It is concluded that a reduction in the weight of light trucks
would have a negligible overall effect, but if there is an effect, it is most likely a modest reduction
of fatalitiesWe also know that speed kills and people are driving faster today than ever before.
40% is like speeding up to 60.
If you are worried about vehicle weight, worry more about speed.
That's why crumple zones are important for vehicle-vehicle collisions--not because they turn kinetic energy into a stored form of potential energy in deformation, but because they drastically decrease the rate at which momentum changes.
The crumple zone spreads that energy transfer out over a longer period of time.
The battery being low should dramatically improve the safety of the vehicle by improving stability.
It's still a huge vehicle, though. It would be nice if we trended smaller, and left vehicles like this to people who actually need it.
The weight of an entire small car!
A little appreciated fact is that a Model 3 and a Mustang have the exact same weight ranges: the SR RWD Model 3 weights about what a ecoboost Mustang does, and a GT500 Mustang is actually about 200lbs heavier than a Model 3 AWD LR Performance.
Constantly telling people that existing on earth as a human is bad for x, y, z is a good strategy if you want people to tune out and stop paying attention to what you're saying.
Depends how fast it's going.