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.
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.