I wouldn't be surprised if there was some perhaps unconscious trend of buyers picking more aggressive looking cars that are more likely to kill on impact.

Yeah it’s a design trade off. Buyers prefer the aggressive look of large grills but that shape decreases visibility and is more likely to kill pedestrians on impact. That trade off is pretty well known. Without government regulations there is little value to car manufacturers to design vehicles that don’t kill pedestrians on impact so they choose designs optimized to sell that also kill more.

There was a recent case where a vehicle designed for the European market actually had the pedestrians protection hood design stripped off and replaced with more aggressive and deadly styling for the US market.

Just look at dodge marketing. They know they're making killing machines.