This sort of framing you're engaging in is exactly what the person you're replying to is complaining about.

Yeah, the person who got hit was technically a pedestrian but just using that word with no other context doesn't covey that it was a pedestrian on a limited access highway vs somewhere pedestrians are allowed and expected. Without additional explanation people assume normalcy and think that the pedestrian was crossing a city street or something pedestrians do all the time and are expected to do all the time when that is very much not what happened here.