Inside the Honda Advanced Safety Test Facility in Tochigi, Japan.  A Honda Pilot and Civic Coupe, mano-a-mano.

According to Insure.com, a website that allows one to get quotes on car, life and other types of insurance, when it comes to the cost of insuring a vehicle, bigger just might be cheaper.

That is, they compared the rates for four of the nation’s largest insurers in various locales for a number of 2009 vehicles.  The company determined, for example, that the national average premium for a 2009 Honda Civic is $1,670 but a mere $1,194 for an F-150 (both predicated on the same type of driver with the same amount of driving and limits).

Now Insure.com does acknowledge that when it comes to gas prices, the Civic is more economical than the F-150.  In its reckoning, if someone drives 15,000 miles per year, 55% city and 45% highway, and if gas costs $4.04 per gallon, then the F-150 will have a bill at the pump of $4,042 and the Civic will cost $2,091. That fuel savings doesn’t have as big a delta because of the additional insurance premiums.

Why the big insurance price differences?  According to Insure.com, “Simply put, small cars are not as safe as large cars and they tend to get into more accidents, leading not only to more broken metal, but more broken bones as well.  And that, in turn, leads to higher repair costs and more litigation expenses.”

So there you have it.

But there are other things to consider, as well.  After all, a motor vehicle is a significant investment.  I went to Kelley Blue Book’s website (www.kbb.com).  I calculated the trade-in price for a 2007 Ford F-150 and a 2007 Honda Civic four-door sedan.  For the F-150 I selected the short bed and left all of the default equipment items in place (e.g., 4.6-liter V8, 2WD, automatic transmission, etc.)  For the Civic I selected the base DX trim, and put in an automatic rather than the defaulted five-speed manual transmission.  All of the other standard items were left.  I put in 15,000 miles and good conditions for both vehicles.

So, the Blue Book values?

$6,795 for the F-150.
$12,335 for the Civic.

But there are other factors to consider, as well.  I gave a call to Russ Rader, spokesperson for the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS; www.iihs.org ) to get a lowdown on crash tests.  Near as I can tell from that organization’s data and that of the National Traffic Highway Safety Administration, when it comes to crash tests, the Civic does exceedingly well.  When it comes to crash tests, the F-150 does exceedingly well.  So isn’t one just as safe as the other?  “You have to be careful with crash-test ratings,” he stated, adding, “You can’t compare vehicles across weight classes.”  So a vehicle can be good in its weight class but when it encounters a vehicle in another class, things might not work out so well.  (A 2008 F-150 with an 8-ft. box, V6 and 4x2 configuration has a curb weight of 4,657 lb.; an ’08 Civic DX with an automatic transmission weighs 2,690 lb.)

“People in smaller, lighter-weight vehicles always get the short end of the stick,” he said.  “Always.”  Evidently, the IIHS crash tests are like-to-like: a small car crashing into the front of another small car.  Not a truck.  ““Mass is protective,” he said.  “Weight is protective,” he said.  (He acknowledged, however, that at some point there are diminishing returns as regards adding weight.)  “The laws of physics haven’t been repealed.”

Not all analyses indicate that smaller cars are inherently more dangerous, however.  A study released in March 2002 that was prepared for the U.S. Dept. of Energy from the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, “An Analysis of Traffic Deaths by Vehicle Type and Model,” written by Marc Ross, University of Michigan Physics Dept., and Tom Wenzel of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, looks at “the risk of death in traffic accidents, depending on type of vehicle and vehicle model.  Here, risk is driver deaths per year per million vehicle sales, for model years 1995-1999.”  They look at the risk to the driver of a vehicle and the risk to the driver of the other vehicle.  Together, that is known as “combined risk.”  And their analysis shows that “pickup trucks are much less safe than all other types.”

However, they also conclude, “Pickup trucks, as driven, are riskier than any other major type of vehicle.  The risk to drivers of the average pickup is higher than that for minivans, SUVs, and large and midsize cars, although it is not significantly different from that for the average compact and subcompact car.”  (Interestingly, the Civic and VW Jetta are cited as being “low-risk subcompacts.”)

As vehicle manufacturers rush to create more small fuel-efficient cars and as more of them get on the roads, things will undoubtedly change.  For one thing, there will be more small vehicles, so the odds of like-to-like crashes of small-to-small increases.  What’s more, the engineers at the auto companies have gotten a whole lot better at crash energy management through the use of CAE analysis leading to the utilization of advanced materials in strategic safety areas (e.g., using boron steel for B-pillars), so “small” can be “safe.”

But here’s one thing to keep in mind: Whether you have a Civic or an F-150, a Bentley or a beater, be a better, safer driver.  Always.