One thing I noticed as soon as I bought my large, offroady SUV (never having driven an SUV before) is that other traffic treated me much more respectfully. When I was in a compact sedan, traffic would swerve in front of me much more often, people would refuse to let me merge, drivers would ride my bumper, and so on. All of those things still happen, but much, much less frequently. For inattentive drivers, it's more difficult to ignore an SUV, and for angry drivers, it's more difficult to bully me around. And yeah, many of these bad drivers are in SUVs themselves, where it's easier to miss a nearby sedan.

Am I fixing the problem by driving an SUV myself? No, but I totally understand why people feel safer in them.