[lupusreal]

For various reasons, Americans broadly opted to live in suburbs with car-centric lifestyles instead of dense urban areas where walking is viable. Where I live now I'm about 100x more likely to encounter a deer than a pedestrian. This is the context needed to understand why Americans generally aren't interested in prioritizing pedestrian safety. Making pedestrians safer so people can give up their cars is just a bizarre proposal to most Americans. The American anti-car niche is very small, comprising mostly of terminally online people with anxiety problems.

For what it's worth, I did personally live in a city and had a pedestrian lifestyle for about 15 years. I never felt particularly imperiled; the national statistic for pedestrian deaths may seem spooky but some very basic precautions, like making a habit of looking both ways even when you have the right of way, eliminates almost all of the risk.