Note that the US pedestrian safety crisis revolves around a few exceptionally dangerous states (looking at you, Texas and Florida). Many relatively safe states (like those in New England) are on par with other rich countries. The Southeast and West are not.
The things that kill otherwise healthy elderly people are boredom, depression and isolation and we've turned large chunks of this country into machines built to generate all three. The nearest thing my aunt could walk to was a gas station, 2.5 miles away across a major highway. Seems bad.
In a sane world, given SF's geography and prime location on the Pacific Rim? It'd look like Singapore
my largest schtick is about how SF could fit four million people w/in city limits alone (manhattan density) and the rest of the SFBA could be made much more albeit less extremely dense and you'd have the greatest metro area in the world w/out any encroachment upon existing beautiful open spaces.
HELLO YES YOU ARE EXACTLY MY FLAVOR OF MAD PERSON. The fact that El Camino Real isn’t lined with 25-story apartment buildings for its entire length from Colma to Santa Clara should have been cause for the entire Bay Area to have its planning privileges revoked decades ago.