Commercial drivers are involved in collisions less frequently, and the more stringent licensing requirements (i.e. a law) are probably helping with that.
Drivers knowing that they will get away with mowing down a pedestrian so long as they say they didn't see them is also going to encourage dangerous driving.
Most importantly, laws that promote safer street designs make a massive difference in pedestrian fatalities.
All this to say that: laws do protect people from 2ton hunks of steel.
> Drivers knowing that they will get away with mowing down a pedestrian so long as they say they didn't see them is also going to encourage dangerous driving.
This is silly. Nobody thinks this. ”Mowing down a pedestrian”, even if one has a perfect legal defense, would be incredibly traumatic even for the driver. Traffic rules ought to be engineered with practicality (physics, the limits of human cognition and visual perception, etc.) paramount.