A line of parked cars between traffic and sidewalk is a substantial barrier on its own.
If you look at a high-traffic street where parking is prohibited, the Magnificent Mile in Chicago, you'll notice that there are gigantic concrete planters between the cars and the regular pedestrian traffic. Retail stores protect their entrances with concrete bollards. Construction zones protect workers from traffic with segmented Jersey barriers and water-filled crash barrels. Those are actual solutions.
But then you have suburban pearl-clutchers who lobby for a 15 mph speed limit and speed bumps in their cookie-cutter subdivisions, rather than actually making their streets safer for pedestrians. Or by replacing yield signs with stop signs. Those people don't realize that "change the law" is not always equivalent to "fix the problem".
If you look at a high-traffic street where parking is prohibited, the Magnificent Mile in Chicago, you'll notice that there are gigantic concrete planters between the cars and the regular pedestrian traffic. Retail stores protect their entrances with concrete bollards. Construction zones protect workers from traffic with segmented Jersey barriers and water-filled crash barrels. Those are actual solutions.
But then you have suburban pearl-clutchers who lobby for a 15 mph speed limit and speed bumps in their cookie-cutter subdivisions, rather than actually making their streets safer for pedestrians. Or by replacing yield signs with stop signs. Those people don't realize that "change the law" is not always equivalent to "fix the problem".