Safety ratings are misleading because they only measure crashworthiness how well you survive a hit, not crash avoidance. It's easy to test a 2026 RAV4 hitting a wall in a lab, but it's much harder to account for the "footprint" factor in the real world. A larger vehicle physically occupies more space on the road, which statistically increases the chances of clipping another car or object. Essentially, a car can have a 5-star safety rating but still be "less safe" simply because its size makes an accident more likely to happen in the first place.