It's worth bearing in mind that the people making these policy decisions in 2020 were doing so without any objective knowledge of how the pandemic would actually end up playing out.
Car safety is somewhat different. While the harms of a car-dependent society are subjectively hard to come to terms with, especially for those who have grown accustom to it, it's a lot easier to objectively measure and predict.
I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. Even in 2020, they knew that the fatality rate was very low for most of the population and was only an issue for the elderly and those with specific comorbidities. Many of the secondary and n-ary effects of either the pandemic or eliminating cars are unknown until they actually play out. There may be some projections, but those projections tend to change. For example, maybe electric scooter become a huge problem because people refuse to walk after cars are banned (negating the potential exercise related benefits).
Car safety is somewhat different. While the harms of a car-dependent society are subjectively hard to come to terms with, especially for those who have grown accustom to it, it's a lot easier to objectively measure and predict.