You take a substantial side hit, you'll wish it had a full frame. I feel much more secure in my wife's Suburban LTZ than I do in my Focus RS Turbo hatchback and even more secure in my Ford F350 pickup truck and candidly I care little about fuel mileage and more about staying safe and alive with all the idiots on the roads today.
In reality, a sub compact buggy or even a grocery mon wannabe SUV would be destroyed if it hit my truck and I'd most likely drive away. Same deal with the Suburban but certainly not with my Focus. it's a wad of tinfoil with a supercar engine. I don't commute. My business is right here. Walk out the back door, take 15 steps to the machine shop and I'm at work supervising my employees and wife is gainfully retired as well.
You are talking about two entirely different things. I would much rather be in an Oshkosh M985 than a Suburban or a F350 in an accident. They are vastly different vehicles so the comparison is as silly as a Suburban vs a smaller SUV.
Just like the fact you don't commute doesn't mean anything to people who do. Neither is wrong or better than the other, it is just different. Due to this, different people have different needs, it seems the Bronco Sport fits his needs and that is great. He bought a vehicle that he likes, works perfectly for him, and is a solid choice. Just because it doesn't fit your uses doesn't make it a horrible choice.
Also if you look into it a bit more.
Suburban for 2024
The NHTSA tested two variants of the Chevy Suburban for its standard tests: the two-wheel and four-wheel drive variants. Both variants were rated
four out of five stars. Regarding the frontal crash tests by the NHTSA, the overall rating is four out of five stars.
The Bronco Sport
"Safety ratings are excellent, with the government (NHTSA) giving it a perfect five stars for overall, frontal and side crash protection. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety named the 2023 Bronco Sport a Top Safety Pick+ for its best-possible performance in all crash tests and for its crash-prevention tech."
If you want to understand vehicle accidents take a look at two similar-sized vehicles one with Unibody and one full frame. You will learn the Unibody normally keeps the occupants safer in an accident. They have crumple zones designed to absorb the energy from a collision where a framed vehicle often transfers it to the occupants. See the study below:
"Crash fatality risk and unibody versus body-on-frame structure in SUVs
Eric M Ossiander 1,
Thomas D Koepsell 2,
Barbara McKnight 3
Affiliations expand
Abstract
Background: In crashes between cars and SUVs, car occupants are more likely to be killed than if they crashed with another car. An increasing proportion of SUVs are built with unibody, rather than truck-like body-on-frame construction. Unibody SUVs are generally lighter, less stiff, and less likely to roll over than body-on-frame SUVs, but whether unibody structure affects risk of death in crashes is unknown.
Objective: To determine whether unibody SUVs differ from body-on-frame SUVs in the danger they pose to occupants of other vehicles and in the self-protection they offer to their own occupants.
Methods: Case-control study of crashes between one compact SUV and one other passenger vehicle in the US during 1995-2008, in which the SUV was model year 1996-2006. Cases were all decedents in fatal crashes, one control was selected from each non-fatal crash.
Findings: Occupants of passenger vehicles that crashed with compact unibody SUVs were at 18% lower risk of death compared to those that crashed with compact body-on-frame SUVs (adjusted odds ratio 0.82 (95% confidence interval 0.73-0.94)). Occupants of compact unibody SUVs were also at lower risk of death compared to occupants of body-on-frame SUVs (0.86 (0.72-1.02)).
Conclusions: In two-vehicle collisions involving compact SUVs, unibody structure was associated with lower risk of death both in occupants of other vehicles in the crash, and in SUVs' own occupants."
