Edit: lifted trucks, after market front bars, louder exhaust with larger exhaust tips, truck nuts, American flags or thin blue line flags covering the rear window.. None of these are from government regulations
I like that when I hit two deer in it there was zero, absolutely zero, damage to the vehicle. Thank you brush guard.
As for safety "In 2013-16, car occupants were only 28 percent more likely to die in collisions with SUVs than with cars" [1] So you are correct. There is one problem here and that's
"Although pickups are also less of a threat than they used to be, in 2013-16 they were still 2½ times as likely to kill the driver of a car they crashed into, compared with a car colliding with another car"
This reminds me of hoarding, thinking the way you or your wife does just keeps upping the game. Maybe you'll need an even bigger truck because all trucks are large to feel safe. Now everyone is driving fuel inefficient vehicles both wasting money and hurting the environment. You said you are rural so I wonder how much you spend on gas and what could you do with that savings.
Presumably others are now terrified to be around your massive vehicle, and you don't appear to have bought it for a practical purpose, so the premise that your wife was made to feel unsafe is then not an indictment of industrial sized vehicles making the roads less safe for others. Instead, it is embracing the stereotypical American pursuit of having the biggest baddest mfing vehicle on the road in a "fuck you I got mine" race to the bottom. It reads as a pretty good satire: "Woman in fear of being crushed by giant vehicle feels much better now that others fear being crushed by her giant vehicle."
You say the comment is lacking in self awareness because she has become what she feared. I'd say that is not lacking self awareness though it definitely feeds into the "race to the bottom." That is orthogonal to self awareness, it is tragedy of the commons. She has no obligation to lower her sense of safety to make others feel better.