Ehhh, people might be arguing different points here.

Having been to NY more than once, yes, there are way more people and lots do cross outside the crossing, run across when traffic slows, or occasionally just saunter across and dare you not to stop. But NY is also an order of magnitude more congested than Detroit and NY drivers are more aggressive and defensive because you have to be aggressive to get anywhere, but you also have to be prepared for a truck to stop, someone to dart out, a car to pull out of a space, a bike, two men moving a pane of glass...

However, I've never seen anyone in NY walk through the street as if they belonged there. As in not crossing, but spurning the sidewalk for the street as is done often in Detroit, in all weather, times of day and lighting conditions. You also have people crossing major thoroughfares with high speed limits like Gratiot and 8 Mile, slowly, outside the crossing, under the influence, at night, in dark clothes. Add to that drivers who are distracted, and used to encountering relatively few cars, let alone pedestrians, and yeah, we could quite possibly have a higher per capita pedestrian death rate than larger cities.