To be clear, a huge majority of crashes happen at the interface points between multiple traffic streams. Higher speeds in that situation is absolutely both an

To be clear, a huge majority of crashes happen at the interface points between multiple traffic streams. Higher speeds in that situation is absolutely both an exacerbating factor in the likelihood of a crash (by increasing the stopping distance) and the severity of the crash when it happens. The ticket is to design roads such that people naturally drive at safer speeds. The collective insanity is that we as a society allow engineers to pretend that features intended to speed up traffic are a safety mechanism.