This article is going off of incidents per miles driven, but that doesn't make any sense. It's the level of walking that matters, not the level of driving. Especially when one has gone way up and one has gone way down.

The statistic only says that cars are more likely to hit pedestrians, not that being a pedestrian is itself more dangerous. If people were walking 2x as much in 2020 then this 20% increase would actually mean pedestrians were relatively safer. There's no conclusion to be drawn until you consider the miles-walked number too.