[notacoward]

One possibility might be a combination of the "mostly urban" and "big SUV" factors. To put it another way: where are people driving those larger vehicles. I don't have numbers, but it does seem like vehicles that were once common mostly in suburban/exurban/rural environments are now more common in cities as well. Poor visibility plus higher pedestrian density seems like a powerfully bad combination.

Mostly, though, drivers have just gotten worse. Corner-cutting is one of my pet peeves, and a good example here. I used to see someone cutting a corner across opposing traffic - usually someone turning off an arterial vs. someone trying to come out of the side street - less than once a week. Now, even though I drive less, it seems to be everyone all the time. If they're not cutting the corner, they're swinging wide to the same effect. Ditto for running red lights. Where I used to see one person running it by half a second, I now see three running it by multiple seconds. Turning where there's a "no turn on red" same way. I've stood at a rotary and counted how many cars were not using it properly, endangering others. Yeah, I know, get a life, but the fact remains that drivers are worse.

The only real question IMO is why drivers are worse. I have more theories, of course. Breakdown of the social contract, people under more time pressure, phones (though that was already examined), etc. But those kind of aren't essential to my point so I'll leave them aside for now.