I'm not really sure what you can do to fix it, and anything you could do would be political suicide. I'd like to think if i were in charge, I'd have them banned for urban use by the end of the week, but I'd also be out of office by next Monday.
Because I would rather die than kill. I honestly can't understand how anybody would prefer the opposite. How do you live with yourself knowing that you have killed somebody?
Secondly, this mindset is also considering at in a collision with a larger vehicle, like a truck, the SUV means possible survival, small car means certain death, and the trucker walks away anyway (no, that's not a guarantee but it's heavily implied by the "big is safe" message). The fate of a hypothetical small car is only a subset of possibilities, and also can be mostly discounted because:
Thirdly, if you are driving an urban tank in order to defend against the bad drivers (you being, naturally, a very good driver), anyone who dies in a crash with you killed themselves. It's your job to defend you and yours (going by SUV adverts, they're very photogenic and adoring) from that brutal recklessness.
I don't think it's complicated psychology, even if I think it's extremely misguided.
Not least, the tank is disproportionately a danger to your own kids, has shit visibility and is probably not as safe in a collision as it might feel, leading to a false sense of invulnerability and confidence to push into dangerous situations.
However terrible single party dictatorships like China is, at least they can build high-speed rail (right over your property they've forced you to relinquish) or force cities to electrify without needing to consider the moaning voters who are resistant to change.
The reality is that manufacturers have captured the EPA regulations and are using them to steer the market in the direction they want, and in doing so actually making the environment (to say nothing of road safety) worse.
Manufacturers want more profit per-car. They also want to push the market into categories that have higher tariffs on imports. They don't want to be in the market of compact cars or sedans or even, increasingly, large but lightweight vehicles like minivans so they steer the market and regulations away from these vehicle classes.
Subjecting big trucks to the same standards as small cars either makes the fuel standards pointless (as they cater to trucks), or outlaws trucks entirely, which is political suicide. People already pay extra for big trucks, which suggests it's something they intrinsically like, and will oppose efforts to ban them.