How do the Driver and Safety Rankings works in Online races for Le Mans Ultimate?

Safety ranking is still too arbitrary and it's tiresome being penalised for any contact, even when you're not at fault.

Drivers who hit the back of the car in front hard, shouldn't that be complicated to manage through the game?

Being penalized repeatedly in the first turns for this kind of shock is disastrous for the safety rank, I had the bitter experience yesterday, starting third on the grid, the two drivers behind were too aggressive on the 4/ 5 first turns, repeated rear impacts and at the last contact one of them cuts me off in the middle of a turn and takes me off the track with him, result I go 16th, finished the race 13th and my safety rank drops greatly, much more than my BR rank.

The shoddy safety rating is the biggest problem with online right now. It's designed to "not determine fault" and explicitly penalizes all drivers. Because unsafe rejoins, changing lines under braking, and punting punish both drivers, there's little incentive to race clean. The expected "8-10 clean Daily Races would help you reach Silver Safety Rank" is optimistic. I'm well past that, and despite starting my races from the pits, still struggle.

Driver rating should be represented numerically as well. It's important for match-up purposes. AFAIK only way of playing with friends online currently is making sure that you have similar driver rank, so it's important to know exactly where you are.

The purpose is good, the result not so good.

When a driver is clearly hit from the back, may be even when braking for a crash in front of him/her, he/she should not be penalized for the contact, or for other contacts that happen in the same context (say a couple of seconds after he/she is hit).
The drive-through penalties for the rolling starts are also not working good: a driver should be penilized only in case of contacts or in case he/she overtakes the driver in front before the green flag.