It feels more dangerous, but that sense of danger is what improves safety. It's when people, especially drivers, feel comfortable that accidents increase; they

It feels more dangerous, but that sense of danger is what improves safety. It's when people, especially drivers, feel comfortable that accidents increase; they let their guard down. The US has dramatically higher rates of pedestrian and cyclist fatalities and injuries than Western European countries, both per capita and per kilometers walked and cycled, and that's presumably with those countries having more narrow roads.[1] See, e.g., https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5227927/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5227927/ Japan falls somewhere between the US and EU. But since the elderly are at far higher risk of both injury and especially fatalities, the larger elderly demographic might have something to do with it. That sense of danger is it's own legitimate issue, though, and as someone with two small kids I'm definitely a proponent of separating pedestrian and cyclist traffic from cars, and even cyclists from pedestrians.[2] [1] The lived density in the US isn't that different from Europe. There's plenty of analysis showing that. But I haven't seen rigorous data and analysis comparing road layouts, traffic patterns, and their association with pedestrian and cyclist accidents rates writ large (as opposed to local studies), thus the conjecture. [2] Cyclists in the US are incredibly aggressive. I've never been hit by a car, but I've been hit twice by cyclists while crossing the street, and nearly a third by one going so fast I definitely could have been killed. (It does happen--cyclists killing pedestrians, albeit usually the elderly.) Two of those three incidents the cyclist was going the wrong way down a one-way, and while ever since the first crash I habitually look both ways crossing a one-way, the third incident happened just as I was turning my head to look in the reverse direction while stepping off the curb--they were flying down the (flat) road the wrong way while also hugging the curb. (FWIW, I was crossing at a busy crosswalk downtown, not jaywalking.) While drivers are liable to be negligent, cyclists of all ages seem much more often to be wantonly reckless.