Yes, you're supposed to be the one checking that you don't hit pedestrians. Cities are for humans first, machines second. Drive slower. If you want to drive fast, take a road trip.
Pedestrians are *also* subject to right-of-way rules, just like everyone else on the road. Many examples of people running between parked/stopped cars and getting smoked when they hit an open lane with a vehicle they did not expect to be there.
Not the driver's fault.
If you're going fast enough in an area where someone could step out, and someone does step out, if you hit them then you were clearly going too fast.
It would be interesting to see what an intentionally and well designed city could look like. I’d probably have a walkable city center, no cars, and maybe scooters could be allowed but required to have some automatic wireless-controlled limiter that keeps them below 10mph or something.
My neighborhood, which borders one of the ancient entryways into the city (Mariahilferstrasse), is converting to pedestrian-priority streets, chopping off lanes and turning them into an extension of the main Mariahilferstrasse walking street, is an example of just what you describe. It is being laid out with rest stops and trees, and water springs, and so on - and it is delightful, true, to have such conveniences as bike-only lanes. However, they are being exploited by the delivery classes whose mini-me mopeds, limited to 25km/h, are considered ‘bicycles’ for the purposes of the bike lanes. Too many times I’ve seen clueless tourists (mostly Americans) who have no idea what those bike lanes are for, stepping into them, only to narrowly escape death or dismemberment at the hands of the delivery guy, exploiting the lane.
My class bike can only ride on the road, so it’s only in the quieter streets I have to be super-alert .. but man, those guys in the bike lanes are nonsense.
Two people who actually live the same experience may have different opinions on "right" and "wrong", and the law may differ from those opinions.
But man, assuming bad faith on the part of others is a hell of a way to go through life.
The point is, people in cities have become accustomed to using noise as their first sense, and vision much later. Sometimes far too late. And if I hadn’t been driving extremely defensively, as always, I would definitely have hit many, many stupid pedestrians with very little self-preservation sensibility.
If you’re a pedestrian, look both ways before you cross the road. Duh.
As an electric rider I take extra responsibility for my stealth. It is a blessing and a curse. But I’ll get a whistle for some of the quieter alleys .. people really are pretty uninitelligent when it comes to some streets.