65mph traffic through a village is noisy, and makes it more difficult to cross the road as a pedestrian. There's also a railroad, cemetery and several buildings in the way of expanding the road.
A five-lane road is already hard to cross, regardless of the traffic speed. I understand that this design is common in the US, but it boggles my mind that people would even consider crossing a road of that size as a pedestrian unless the traffic speed was 15 mph or less. Something like that would be solved by a bridge or tunnel in developed countries.
But more realistically, in other countries the 4-lane road would go around the village, and a 2-lane road with a low speed limit through it.
In either case the liability of towns or the well-being of the people who live there do not factor into design decisions of villages whatsoever.
A footbridge doesn't serve anyone in power, and nobody locally would use it. A tunnel in south Louisiana, even that far inland, is logistically stupid even with good intentions.
1: I was born and raised in the Louisiana terminus of 165, which is only a little larger than Fenton, and Fenton is only one of about a dozen such small towns on that route.