In my 20 year old luxo-barge car (see: a once large vehicle, average/small by today's standards), I am frequently at eye level with wheel wells and the hood is 2ft+ taller than my roofline on stock trucks. Combine that with the weight, any t-bone type accident (or pedestrians-- there is no bouncing off the hood, just absorbing the wall of energy) will be that much worse. Vehicles keep getting so much larger and are erasing any drive-train improvements in efficiency. Today's 3rd gen Tacomas (which were once a compact pickup) are similar in size to late 90's full-size domestics.

That other large SUVs like Suburbans/Tahoes (same platform as GM trucks) do not have the same opposing death rate, could suggest that things like driver behavior play an equally large role. This theory (along with the seat belt usage) could be supported by the high rates of driver fatalities in the Dodge muscle (marked as large, but RWD Hemi...) car segment.

That makes sense on the driver death rate, sure. I was looking at the 'other driver', meaning people they crashed into.

A small truck like a Tacoma or Colorado scores somewhere in the 40-50 range for other driver death rate. This on par with a Honda Accord, for example. In contrast, a RAM 3500 scores 189! Makes you really wonder if such things should be legal.