People bring this up a lot on Hacker News, but AEB (Automated Emergency Braking) is essentially standard at this point [0] on new vehicles (technically NHTSA just makes recommendations on this right now, but as a practical matter OEM's comply because someday soon it'll be mandatory without an explicit waiver).

Between the forward-facing camera (usually running some version of Mobileye EyeQ) and forward-facing radar, the odds of running over a pedestrian directly like you're thinking on a 2023+ vehicle is quite low. Even cross-traffic/bicycle/cutoff scenarios are pretty extensively covered if you read up on Mobileye's website.

Personally, I'd be more concerned with older cars without AEB hitting pedestrians than the "let's make it more enjoyable when pedestrians do get hit" sentiment that seems so common in these discussions here.

[0] https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/automatic-emergency-bra...