The lower part of Manhattan would have had a highway through it but instead it'sa cultural epicenter
(https://untappedcities.com/2013/09/11/nyc-that-never-was-rob...)
In Boston they did the reverse of your example. They took a subway and moved it in to fill the void where a highway was supposed to go before it got cancelled. If they hadn’t cancelled the highway that subway would still be where it used to be. As an aside, the people who cancelled it really have a lot of blood on their hands because a bunch of major surface streets got developed into main thoroughfares as a result and we all know how good it is to have a highway speed road that isn’t grade separated from cross streets, pedestrians and cyclists…
People still die on construction projects all the time, on relatively uninteresting things even. eg, in 2019 four people died when a crane working above a Google office building in Seattle collapsed. It was local news for a few weeks, but I'm not sure it had any other effects, regulatory or otherwise.
There is also a related but separate aspect where environmental activists erected barriers to slow down any development. You still feel its effects today where CEQA is weaponized to slow down a small apartment housing.