I see your point and “things will be better eventually” absolutely isn’t reassuring in the context of the risk that cyclists face daily. I used to live in a city that had the most dangerous roundabout for cyclists in my country, and the promise of future bike lanes doesn’t help people who have already been hit by vehicles on that roundabout.

When I lived in that city, I was involved in local politics and one of the big things we were pushing for were the infrastructural changes that would make things significantly safer for everyone. Often when we’d make our case for why these things were necessary, quoting stats and cases where relevant, there’d be questions like “well were they using bike lights?” or “maybe they should’ve been wearing a hi Vis vest”.

This led to the local university handing out high Vis gear during Freshers week, and anecdotally, cyclists were, on average, more visible. Didn’t affect the stats in any measurable way though. Another thing that came of this was some additional funding was allocated to the police to allow them to be stationed to watch out for, and fine people cycling without lights at night. The issue with this was that the vast majority of cyclists already had lights - it was a city with so many cyclists that in my experience, the average carefulness and responsibility of cyclists was higher than anywhere I’ve lived. I’m not necessarily opposed to ticketing people who didn’t have lights, but I was so frustrated by these measures which were effectively just the result of victim blaming. Fundamentally, an injustice is being done here, and in many cases, completely separated bike lanes is the goal.