It's not a safe/unsafe question. It's a matter of degrees.

You said you're from another country, so your timeline will be different.

In the US , a guy named Ralph Nader wrote a book called "Unsafe at Any Speed." It was about thd Chevy Corvair, a car with fundamental handling flaws that could have been easily and cheaply fixed. As in, take a corner too sharp, and the rear suspension would fold under the car, flopping it. It could be fixed by adding a $5 strap. Those straps were for sale from aftermarket suppliers within months. So, Chevy knew, but did nothing. That car (and all cars at the time) also had metal dashboards that were much stronger than your skull, solid steering columns that would impale the driver, seats that would unfasten from their mountings, and all sorts of shiny metal knobs that would also impale you. Fuel tanks were not capable of surviving a crash, so fuel spills and fires were common. And, the structure was as strong as a wet noodle, so you could end up with the engine in your lap. Seatbelts? The thought was that it was BETTER for you to be thrown out of the car (see fire above.)

That's the point where cars started to become more safe. Seatbelts were introduced in the late 1960s. Plastic interiors became a thing. Steering wheel columns would collapse.

And, although it was done for insurance and environmental reasons (not for safety), emissions controls on car engines killed horsepower. In 1967/8, you could get a 454 cubic inch engine that produced a stated 450 hp (actually closer to 600 hp). After 1973 or so, same sized engine barely made 200 hp. All this went into the 1970s. It's a lot harder to lose control of your car with 200 hp than with 500 hp.

Add the 55 mph speed limit, and car deaths dropped even further.

Disk brakes became more common, and radial tires were safer than bias ply tires. To paraphrase Mr. Miyagi, "Best way to survive crash, no be in one." People started actually buying cars for their safety. Another car brand, the Ford Pinto, was cancelled because of safety issues (fuel tank fires in rear end crashes). The car manufacturers finally got it: ignore safety, and your sales collapse.

By the 1980s, Volvo started advertising safety. Crash testing got introduced. Crumple zones became a thing.

Safety is really freaking hard. It's taken a couple generations to get the engineering right, and the technology is also really complicated /expensive. In the 1980s, cars had automatic seatbelts because people didn't buckle up. Turns out, they're not going to help if your door pops open, so seatbelts are all manual, now.

Cars have been getting safer and safer (airbags, antilock brakes, traction control, tire pressure sensors, anti-collision sensors), but all of that costs money. Also, the reinforcement needed to keep the passengers safe means that cars have a fundamental minimum size/weight, so "small cars" are getting bigger and bigger.

At the same time, all that technology means a performance car from a given time has less actual performance than a basic car from 15-20 years later. That's measured in hard numbers, acceleration, braking, cornering, and lap times.

You live in the golden age of car performance right now.