I am fine with it and I get why it is done the way it is. I just think that using the "realism" card on the same thing that was clearly done not out of realism but because of visuals is a bit wonky.
EDIT: Now sure, you can always argue that if there's a big blast, there should be a lot of casualties but that impacts the gameplay quite a bit so it takes more things to take into consideration. I am sure there are also game play reasons for this however. The Lt dies very fast in a vehicle explosion while the tank commander does not. I also found that the more troops you put into one vehicle, the heavier the damage overall seems (and not just percentage wise). Are there any numbers on how much damage gets applied to each unit?