To be fair, it made slightly more sense in the comics, though still batshit. In the comics there was no noble purpose like they tried to shoehorn in for the MCU. IIRC, Thanos was literally doing it to impressed Death (the cosmic entity) to gain her affection.
The initial reports of this made it sound much worse, now it seems so tame this charge borders on ludicrous. I walked about 2 miles to my bus stop as a kid with no side walk and it was ABSOLUTELY unsafe, but we didn’t have a choice as the roads were no outlet and too narrow for a bus to get into my neighborhood. I never saw a kid get hit, but I knew of multiple adults that were hit by a car with a few fatalities. I still think this Georgia story sounds dumb, so either we’re being deprived of details or the police are being ridiculous.