The auto lobby invented the word jaywalking to shift the liability for dead pedestrians from the people doing the killing to the people doing the walking.

The US also had protests when drivers killed kids, but they were ultimately unsuccessful, except for the odd traffic light installation. https://medium.com/vision-zero-cities-journal/the-baby-carri...

Even in Amsterdam the original "stop the child murder" protests only barely succeeded, and it took a massive oil crisis and a population that could still (if only just) remember what life was like before cars took over their city to get there.