What sort of little bubble do you live in? Where I live people get pretty good utility out of their sport utility vehicles! We have had a ton of snow this winter, including a couple of storms where having ground clearance was key to getting around. The snow was coming down so hard that the plows couldn't keep up. I saw who got stuck and who didn't in that big storm. The interstates were a mess, secondary roads had 2' banks where plows had only gone through in one direction. Front-wheel drive cars and minivans were stuck everywhere, as were tractor trailers, RWD cars without snow tires, and so forth. Everything AWD was still moving pretty well.

Now if you're saying people with true low and high range 4wd trucks and SUVs don't go rock crawling with them that much, that's probably true, but those vehicles have a lot of utility doing things like pulling a boat trailer up a wet boat ramp, driving on a frozen lake to go ice fishing, and driving on farm roads or other unimproved surfaces.