The safety improvements in the past 20 years have been huge. In particular crash structures are better at handling side impact and front offset crashes. And front crash technology can now prevent many collisions.
Many of these same safety "improvements" have also made safety worse for users of other, less expensive vehicles, for cyclists, and for pedestrians, by mandating much higher vehicle weights and larger A pillars that make it harder to see other road users during turns, especially left turns. All this just to avoid crashes that wouldn't happen without the inattention caused by gadgets like automatic transmissions, cruise control, and smartphones.
http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/t/automation-and-crash-avoid...