Are modern pickup trucks objectively safer than modern cars, or is it more about the perception of driving something that feels it's half way to being an armoured vehicle?
In Europe almost no-one drives around in a truck. Even the tradespeople (carpenters, plumbers, roofers, gardeners, heating installers, you name it) all drive light vans, not trucks.
In a collision with a significantly lighter/smaller car? Usually
Can you give a source for that?
I'm struggling to find anything up to date which isn't blatantly biased, so here's something (old!) from Berkeley Lab:
'Those who think that driving big is driving safe, or that lightweight, fuel-efficient vehicles are inherently more dangerous than their heavyweight counterparts, need to think again. A researcher with Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (Berkeley Lab) has teamed with a researcher from the University of Michigan in a unique risk analysis study which shows that, contrary to conventional wisdom, vehicle quality is a much more important safety factor than weight for the drivers of vehicles involved in a crash.
"Most cars are safer than the average sports utility vehicle [SUV], while pickup trucks are much less safe than all other types. Minivans and import luxury cars have the safest records," states the report, "An Analysis of Traffic Deaths by Vehicle Type and Model," which was prepared by Tom Wenzel, an energy analyst with Berkeley Lab's Environmental Energy Technologies Division, and Marc Ross, a professor in Michigan's Applied Physics Department.'
https://www2.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/EETD-SUV-Safet...