That's certainly true. I thought the article focused more on car-car crashes, but those are obviously important, too. It seems like the considerations in suburban and rural areas are fairly different than urban areas.
Protecting everyone is important, but at this point we think disproportionately about people in cars when considering safety. We should be looking at the fact you are vastly more likely to be killed per mile walking or riding than driving. This despite the fact that walking (or cycling) don't even involve hurtling yourself through space at 60mph. (For motorcycles it's not a huge surprise to see higher morbidity, of course, since you combine high speeds AND lack of protection).
In short, we've made driving a car safe, possibly by making it really easy to die doing anything but driving a car. Making drivers nervous, slow, and cautious should help with this. (Correlation =\= causation, I realize). How safe do you feel crossing a busy street with an uncontrolled crosswalk? I hate it - drivers don't actually understand they're supposed to stop. How about bicycling on public roads? Waiting in stop and go traffic on your motorcycle hoping the person texting behind you doesn't pancake you between them and the truck in front of you? (This is a good reason to lane split, btw, or at least adopt a lane position such that if you are hit you get thrown into empty space and not a vehicle).
Pedestrian data is hard to gather well since people don't log walking miles like driving miles, but they are also more likely to die per trip, and again, since people walk shorter distances than they drive, almost certainly more likely to die per mile;
"...Pedestrians are over-represented in the crash data, accounting for 14 percent of all traffic fatalities but only 10.9 percent of trips.... "
"In 2013, 4,735 pedestrians and 743 bicyclists were killed in crashes with motor vehicles (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Traffic Safety Facts). "
http://www.pedbikeinfo.org/data/factsheet_crash.cfm
