There are many, many factors that come into play regarding accident statistics, with street design being only one of them. As soon as I saw "Montreal" in the title I knew where this was going. That's an old city with many narrow streets and a driving population filled with people of marginal driving skills, so it's no surprise that pedestrians (the particular group discussed in detail in the article) don't fare well in the older parts of the city.
It may simply not be possible to re-engineer some of these streets without a lot of demolition of buildings too. If pedestrians won’t exercise common sense in an area with narrow sidewalks and streets, there isn’t much that can be done to make them do it. Are they going to have jaywalking police on the scene all day?