Whilst pedestrians should avoid risky behaviour, we're still largely powerless; e.g. I recently had an encounter with a motorist reversing out of their driveway without looking, and I've twice had motorists drive down the pavement (sidewalk) towards me (once when the road was water-logged, the other time they were trying to bypass traffic).
In such a world (where cars disappeared) would we be having this thread about a need to now ban all bicycles?
To some extent there will always be some risk, just need to find ways to minimize it while balancing utility.
As for a hypothetical bicycle ban in a counterfactual universe, I find the premise too uninteresting to form an opinion about.
I'm far more interested in this world; and don't much care for vacuous syllogisms like 'killing is bad; X kills; therefore X is bad', when there's more to be gleaned from measurement, comparison and statistics. For example, off the top of my head:
- How many are killed by cars compared to bicycles (say, per person-km)?
- How likely is a car crash to kill someone compare to a bicycle crash?
- What is the impact on life-expectancy from driving versus cycling (e.g. sedentary activity versus exercise)?
- How does the throughput of bicycles compare to that of cars?
- How does the infrastructure cost of bicycles compare to that of cars?
- How does the environmental impact of bicycles compare to that of cars?
- etc.
I find these to be far more interesting questions than trivial binaries like 'do cars kill?' (yes; so what?), or 'do bicycles kill?' (yes; so what?).
Similarly, the statistics above can inform a whole spectrum of decisions and interventions that can be made; again, off the top of my head:
- The setting of speed limits
- The setting of road-worthiness criteria
- The setting of test and license requirements
- The layout and features of infrastructure (sight-lines, speed bumps, roundabouts, pedestrian crossings, traffic lights and their sequencing, etc.)
- The classification and permitted uses of roads (e.g. one-way systems, bus lanes, segregated or integrated cycle lanes, etc.)
- etc.
Again, these are seem far more interesting than strawman cliches like "should we ban X?" (which, as far as I can see, you're the one bringing up? I certainly never mentioned it)
Not only that, but in the case of a plane or train crash, the passengers were completely powerless to do anything about it. So it's a death that's imposed on them by the event.
In a car, the driver has nearly all the agency to do something about it and not be part of a crash. Car crashes don't just suddenly happen to people on a random distribution.
Many of them are directly the fault of the driver, so you can opt of those (don't drive drunk, sleepy, etc). Many are the fault of other drivers but you could often opt out by paying attention (go watch youtube dashcam car crash videos, it's astonishing the number of crashes where the victim could've avoided it but doesn't do anything). Many are also due to lack of skill (e.g. car slides on an oil slick and driver doesn't know how to control it) which you can opt out by taking car control training. Some are from equipment malfunction which you can also opt out (maintain your car).