Just to continue to play devils advocate,
The fuel tank in a car is very romote to the heat source of the engine which one would think would spark the fire (outside of the caytalitic converter). In most cars the fuel tank is in the very rear of the car while the engine and the thing that is going to be the main probability for a fire is at the other extreme end of the car up front. A leaking fuel tank 10 feet way from the hot engine would seem to be a little safer than if the fuel tank was between the engine and dash board and right over the top of the hot exhaust. I also think that cars have fuel shut off valves that are suppose to shut off all fuel to the engine with a certain G load impact. But I'm not sure about that.
I agree with you that youre risk of injury in a car is higher if for no other reason is that your exposed to time in a car in far excess of how many hours a year you spend flying. (at least for most of us). Besides I trust other pilots in their planes than I do most of the drivers I see out there! I for one am glad that it is not "easy" to get a pilot's certificate. Otherwise we may end up with what we see on the road with some of the quality of the drivers on the road. Wow!
I fly now with maybe the worst of both worlds. I fly a 1946 11AC Aeronca Chief. It has a fuselage tank (15 gallons) in the nose just under and behind the instruement panel. In addition the Chief also has an 8 gallon aux tank located behind the baggage compartment. So the occupants are literally between two fuel sources. The rear fuel tank if it were to rip loos would smack into the back of your head. The difference only being that an Aeronca's impact speed is far lower and thus far less energy on impact than somethingfaster like a T18. Energy is exponential to speed. I think by the square of the speed. So even a small increase in speed significantly increases the energy upon impact.
The most asinine thing I think I've ever seen is that on my Aeronca Chief there are actually two cigarette ash trays on the instrument panel. Who the heck thinks it would even be remotely a good idea to smoke sitting between two fuel tanks within inches of the ash tray!!!!!! unbelievable. The ash trays do make a very good place to store ear plugs however
This is an interesting subject. Personally I think the fuselage tank makes sense to have gravity feed and keeping the engine running is imporatnt ALL the time, while worrying about impact during crashing is pretty remote chance and has so many variables that occur that each accident is so unique that keeping the fuel system clean and simple makes the most sense to me.
The complication of routing fuel lines and fuel pumps and possible failures in any of that complication versus the single straight gravity feed system doesn't seem worth the potential of maybe safety improvement of removing the fuel from the standard fuselage tank.
The idea that there is a better chance that a wing is damaged enough to rip through a fuel line in an accident versus being "protected" behind the structure of the fuselage makes a lot of sense. At least to me.
BOOM !