Tornado safety - stay in your car?

The graph above shows the annual death toll from tornadoes in the U.S.  Data and graph from NOAA.  Note the y-axis shows deaths per million, so the absolute change would not be so dramatic. 

Via Paul Douglas' On Weather blog, where he considers the question re what to do if you are in your car when a tornado approaches:

Dr. Greg Forbes from The Weather Channel takes a look at a growing debate: is it safer for commuters to ride out a tornado in their cars (with all the built-in safety equipment) or go into a nearby ditch: "About two weeks ago I came back to work after a rare day off and found a letter on my desk from the American Red Cross. It indicated that their organization was changing some of their tornado safety rules. Some of those changes are at odds with safety rules advocated by the National Weather Service (NWS), and that has created a controversy! ... Part of the basis for the change in American Red Cross policy was studies by researcher Tom Schmidlin, who found that a relatively small percentage of vehicles are overturned, tossed, and demolished in tornadoes. The NWS recommends that if you are being overtaken in your car by a tornado, then you should get out of the car and into a nearby building or ditch. The new American Red Cross recommendation is that if no building is available, stay in the car - get out of the car and into a ditch only as a last resort. Crouch down with your seat belt on and your head below the windshield level...