This title is a bit misleading, this isn’t the Washington post saying this, they are just reporting a hog farm manager having said this in 1976

From a physics perspective, yes it does. Not much, but yes it does do something.

In order for a crumple zone to work, the material must be at least slightly softer than the rest of the structure. When you have a collision, both the strong structure and the relatively weak crumple zones will flex, but the crumple zones will flex more. In a big collision, like with another car, they might flex so much they have permanent damage (the crumple), but even with a pedestrian they will flex a little. The more they flex, the more it cushions the impact for both the pedestrian and the occupants of the car.

As I said, the amount of cushion for the two parties is massively skewed in favor of the car, and crumple zones alone are not anywhere near enough to make cars safe for pedestrians. But objectively, yes they do slightly cushion the impact for a pedestrian, and in the perfect edge case collision it might mean the difference between life and death.

To an extent it’s both. I mean intent-wise it’s all about the occupants of the car, but as a side effect it also slightly reduces the impact on the pedestrian. The way I would think about it is that crumple zones on their own aren’t nearly enough to protect pedestrians, but removing them would be going completely in the wrong direction