As for trees, an F350 will mow most of those down and keep going. Same for houses. Bridges can be a problem, but if you hit a bridge, you're doing something wrong.
Trees come in lots of sizes.
Apparently you have no well-built houses over there then :lol: a while back a 12ton truck hit a house a few blocks from here, only the outer wall was damaged a bit. For illustration, this is how truck vs house should look like:
https://pic.armedcats.net/n/na/narf/2010/11/14/_49520515_lymeregisincident008.jpg
If you're doing stuff wrong when hitting bridges, aren't you already doing stuff wrong with the tree or the house?
The headlights and grille might give way, but then you have the rigid structures they're surrounded by - which means that parts of your body will stop but the part in the middle will keep moving - hey, look, more injuries!
Not necessarily more/worse injuries. If you hit something that gives way you get rid of some of the impact, physically speaking you need to be accelerated to the car's speed. After making the grille and lights give way you already gain some speed, making the impact with the rigid structures behind the grille less severe.
So, you think that trucks should have pedestrian guards on their sides? Because that New York crash had the truck sliding broadside on into the pedestrians, not head on. Fail for your cause (I just happened to hear about that because a friend of mine works in the area.)
Even if that specific case was in fact a car going sideways, the principle remains the same. Car hits pedestrians without the pedestrian being at fault.
On the pedestrian guards, our real trucks now have rails or whatever on the side to avoid pedestrians, cyclists or motorcyclists sliding underneath and getting run over. Those are a good thing.
Sidewalks are a valid point, but again, it's very rare for someone to get mowed down by a car traveling on the sidewalk. It's just a non-issue here.
I've seen it happen 3m in front of me, far away from the road, with a taxi doing the hitting. Turns out afterwards his car was to blame.
Stuff like that also happens across the pond.
http://gothamist.com/2010/10/28/two_elderly_drivers_send_four_peopl.php old person drives into restaurant
http://www.kxlh.com/news/pedestrian-hit-killed-in-late-night-missoula-crash/ pedestrian on sidewalk gets hit
My biggest problem with putting so much focus on pedestrian safety is that it won't accomplish much, not until they take the legislation to it's logical conclusion... banning cars entirely.
"Not much" is better than nothing, or even worse, fitting girders to the front of your car. Just because there may be more effective ways to accomplish some goal doesn't mean less effective ways are pointless, they're a step in the right direction.