Pedestrians have the right of way in the situations I mentioned, but not when "jaywalking."
You're not wrong about the system heavily favoring driver's convenience; and when drivers break the law (even if they injure someone) the punishments are light.
> Originally, the legal rule was that "all persons have an equal right in the highway, and that in exercising the right each shall take due care not to injure other users of the way".[8] In time, however, streets became the province of motorised traffic, both practically and legally. Automobile interests in the US took up the cause of labeling and scorning jaywalkers in the 1910s and early 1920s, by then the earlier term of "jay driver" was declining in use.[9][10] The earliest citation in the Oxford English Dictionary follows in 1917.
[8]: Miller McClintock for the Chicago Association of Commerce, "Report and Recommendations of the Metropolitan Street Traffic Survey", p. 133, quoted by Norton, Fighting Traffic, on p. 289.
[9]: Norton, Fighting Traffic, pp. 79-79.
[10]: Peter D. Norton, "Street Rivals: Jaywalking and the Invention of the Motor Age Street", Technology and Culture 48 (April 2007), 331-359 (342). doi:10.1353/tech.2007.0085
You're not wrong about the system heavily favoring driver's convenience; and when drivers break the law (even if they injure someone) the punishments are light.