You’re walking home late at night from the bar because you’ve had 11 shots of tequila but you still made the conscious decision not to drive for the safety of others. You’re crossing a stroad. Someone “in a hurry” decide to run the red light and hits you at 70 km/h (because of course they were speeding, why wouldn’t they?), doesn’t see you because you’re hunched over while you’re walking and it’s really dark and the person is driving a giant SUV with shit visibility.
Cars are one of the largest source of fatal pedestrian accidents in a major city. How much more likely are you to get into an accident if you’re drunk and is less able to pay attention to cars breaking the rules and putting you in danger? Walking safely in most cities is a task you need to be sober for because you have to walk super defensively.
Based on my experience with drunks around roads, the cars generally aren’t at fault. People do real stupid shit when they’re drunk, like taking a highway tunnel instead of walking the extra 500m for the pedestrian tunnel. You can have all the protection you want, but if you’re to drunk to walk straight and end up in traffic there’s nothing to protect you. Same shit also happens with train tracks every now and then. Hell, I’ve even read stories about traffic deaths when drunk people and bikes collided (especially if the person on the bike was elderly).
If you’re drunk enough that you can’t navigate the streets about as well as when you’re sober, take a cab or the bus or have someone pick you up. That’ll also help in case you run into health issues because of excessive alcohol intake.
As a bonus for drunk accidents: because of the delayed response you may walk away from certain crashes with fewer injuries because your body doesn’t tense up to attempt to distribute the impact. On the other hand, you’re much worse off with other accidents.
Walking drunk is safer than taking a cab unless the cab is electric. When you walk drunk, you risk your own life and maybe one other person. When you take a fossil cab, you risk everyone’s lives forever.