It's probably got something to do with human psychology that we're willing to put up with the risks of unintentional injuries and not with the those of violent crime, even though the former may be greater than the latter.

As for being "street smart," I suspect a lot of that may be somewhat local and period-dependent. Other than the obvious sort of guideline that anyone can follow ("avoid unlit, isolated alleys in the middle of the night"), much of what you need is based on recognizing certain patterns or patterns of behaviors, and knowing what kind of risks these patterns pose. Gang colors, guy looking to sell drugs, muggers casing potential victims, con artists trying to get money with a sob story, frauds trying to entrap you in a manufactured traffic accident, etc. But whereas wilderness survival skills can be codified in a book -- nature doesn't change that much -- this kind of urban stuff changes a lot. Perhaps the nature of crime doesn't change so much, but the specific details we need to pick out a pattern can change. So whereas Boy Scouts can learn to start a fire or canoe, maybe it's just harder to learn how to survive in the city.

People who aren't used to managing the risks of living in the city just may not have the skills to make themselves safer. They choose to blame the environment as dangerous, and they refuse to change their behavior to improve their own safety. Let's take a simple example. I had a roommate who drove me nuts because he didn't like locking the door, and didn't think it was that important. He got into the practice of locking doors for a few weeks when he heard about a rash of crimes in the neighborhood, but then he stopped -- because it was all safe again in his mind. I grew up in a city. I lock the front door reflexively even if I'm just going out to drop off the garbage at the dumpster. So I feel sad whenever a story comes up about attacks on tourists in big cities. Sometimes these guys put themselves at risk without ever realizing it, by going to places that I'd never go to at the wrong time of the day.

So I think some people just adopt the urban survival strategy of staying away from the city, because they just don't have the knowledge of surviving in the city. Some of them may even choose to regard wilderness survival as an inherently more valuable skill than urban street smarts. This sort of stuff can also be due to a cultural divide as well.