Earlier quoted context omitted.
Much safer? Only for the person inside the metal box. Pedestrian deatgs have been rising for years now, thanks to bigger and heavier cars. There has to be some middle ground for safety inside and on the outside.
I was interested in this and took a look. Pedestrian deaths in the USA are up a bit, up 10% since 2010, from 33k to 36k in 2019. [1] USA population over the same period has increased from about 6%, from ~309M to 329M. So it's definitely a real increase, but 4% adjusted is pretty moderate. More interesting to me is that over longer time periods, the pedestrian fatality rate was much higher, and the recent increase is…
A lot of times false precision bugs me but here I think you are comparing fine differences and need a bit more.
Using your figures, (36/33)/(329/309), I get 2.5%, not 4%.