(Also, love your username… I thought I was the only one. ;-) )
GP mentioned the safety-related improvements to demonstrate exactly how irrational being scared in their particular community was, and perhaps to lament the wasted effort and money a bit. The before/after was to illustrate the populace was so affected by whatever's happening they actually regressed from previously being very willing to walk in worse conditions.
At least I did until the response you got that didn't say exactly the same. But I still suspect that was the gist, in the original context, and it just got a bit lost in rebuttal.
Are you sure about that? What's your source?
Some quick searching gave me https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/historical-fatalit... which even looks like a decrease per capita over the past decades.
No clue whether that source of data is any good, and what the rates outside of the Us are. Just FYI, I don't like car centric places either, and that's part of the reason I probably couldn't live in the US.
Especially modern pickups and SUVs have an increased risk of severe injuries for pedestrians due to the high front area which hits vulnerable body parts where a station wagon would hit legs. You’ll likely find two or more overlapping trends.
Btw, I heard that European cars pose less risks to pedestrians and cyclists?
Also, nothing to do with "being stupid", if there are cars going 60mph right next to where you're walking, it's the luck of the draw whether you get decapitated by a truck or not.
Over the intervening years, the town added nice wide sidewalks (previously none), fancy crosswalk infrastructure, lighting, and started enforcing speed limits extremely aggressively. Yet the number of people on foot and bike dwindled to almost nothing and now the only ones are older middle aged folk walking their dogs.