SUVs were never designed to be safe

SUVs were never designed a safety project - the whole light truck category was created as a carve-out for things like army jeeps, until someone realized they could exploit a loophole and released the Jeep Grand Cherokee. And they were, for years, famously unsafe - does no one still recall the famous tendency of early SUVs to roll over? They are less safe than an equivalent vehicle. They just happen to be more massive than average. If everything else was equally as massive, their safety premium would vanish. 

Admittedly, they tend to do better than older passenger cars. By dint of height, when they rear-end a car with a low trunk, they over-run the car, killing the passengers in the backseat, rather than driver of the SUV. So, from a public health standpoint, I guess that's sort of a selling point, given that most cars are empty most of the time? 

(It's not by accident that all new passenger cars have a tall rear designed to stop SUVs from overrunning their rear.)