There is an option for that, in the mod map settings there's one called "Keep remains" that does exactly what you want it to.
I also had a line of code that doesn't spawn a selectable corpse if there are no items, which I now think I should remove since that's not what happens for player corpses; Those just stay there until you mine them, which was changed in 2.0. I think I'm going to change it to always spawning a corpse, and the setting will still exist to keep the remains after removing the corpse inventory entity. What I'm not sure about now is if I should remove the graphics instantly if a vehicle dies and keep remains is set to false, but I don't think there's a good answer there since there's downsides to both ways.