A lot of danger to pedestrians and cyclists actually comes from the design of the car. It's currently cool to have like some sort of livestock-rammer over your front bumper that just crushes pedestrians instead of sending them up over the hood. People don't have those for safety, they just think it looks cool. We should really make those illegal on city streets. (If you drive a pickup truck out on your farm, this doesn't apply, I can see the legitimacy of that sort of vehicle choice and that sort of mod. It's for actual productivity, not style.)
Basically, the industry puts 0 thought into protecting other road users, and it's a really big problem. We should start mandating safety features for those outside of the car.
The big problem is that driving isn't just for rich people. It's a lifeline for the poorest Americans that have no choice but to trade free time for commuting time to be able to afford to live. So if we mandate expensive safety features, it's just a tax on the poor. People might be willing to pay the tax to save their own bacon, but they certainly aren't going to do it to save some random person riding their bike to work. That's why we have to dramatically rethink how we build our cities and suburbs. Things like electric cars to combat climate change are a distraction from the real issues. Fossil fuels aren't smashing pedestrians, dividing our cities into unliveable neighborhoods with 20 lane freeways, or mandating 1 parking space for every person in a 10,000 person office building. That's just cars, and electric cars fix none of it.
The good news is, it looks like all the suburbs built in the 50s are due for things like water main replacement, street replacement, sewer replacement, etc. and nobody can afford it. So we'll have a chance to densify and cut cars out of our culture for good. Until then, hide your children and hide your wives, so that people can freely rampage through your neighborhood on their way to a meeting they're already 20 minutes late for. In a carbon-sensitive way, of course.