Large vehicles are important part of American economy and mostly driven by blue collar workers doing their work. For example things like plumbing, construction site work etc. Now a days environment scientists and engineers too drive these large vehicles as they are very important for their day to day work. Not everyone can drive Tesla Model 3 everywhere.
In fact majority of those large vehicles are you see are mostly driven by such needs ( pun intended).
But the research on this topic itself is pretty shoddy. For example one has to look at other variables. Who was driving when the accident happened ? Chances are someone who was rushing to his work.
A lot of other data points out that the drivers are at fault are often poor people going to their work in their work vehicle. Another data is he victims too are poor people going to their work and disregarding basic pedestrian safety.
These are not men pretending to be rugged.