Would you rather raise your family in:

(0) a place where nobody else can have an SUV whose extra size directly increases the danger to your kids, but you also can't own one to keep your kids slightly safer while you drive them; or

(1) a place where you can have an SUV that keeps your family slightly safer while they're in it, but everyone else can also own one and they make your family less safe whenever they're not in an SUV themselves?

Social rules are, at least at their best, a way to do better than a Nash equilibrium of mutual defection.

Since (0) is impossible, the answer is the one already proposed.

Why do you think (0) is impossible? Do laws not exist where you are? Are you not able to change them?

To make (0) happen you have to force 10s or 100s of millions of people to give up their current vehicle and buy a new one. To some people that sounds feasible, but they're a good bit more authoritarian than the average politician in the US.

It doesn't need to be a Fox news black and white argument about personal freedoms. Impose safety regulations that accounts for the people outside the vehicle, and the overall safety of the streets. You don't need to wipe out current SUVs and trucks overnight.

If they took away gas guzzling V8 engines, they can take away unwieldy oversized light pickups and SUVs.

Most people don’t own SUVs, even in the USA; and even if they did, laws can be local, so it would be your city or whatever rather than everyone everywhere.

But in this case if everyone thinks that way and buys an SUV the world in general is less safe for your family and you're in fact to safer from having a bigger car, if you ever were which seems to be debatable.

False premise

Not to 99% of the world, but to 99% of the people in an egocentric society.

"Make your passengers more safe, by making your community less safe" is also a not an easy sell, but Americans are paying the big bucks to do it.

At some point your family is going to be on the receiving end. We don't have to be so shortsighted.