This is backed by infrastructure studies. It's called traffic calming and it's done on purpose in places with advanced infrastructure such as the Netherlands.
In the same vein, I encourage neighbors to park their cars on the street rather than in their garage or driveway so the neighborhood street becomes narrower for traffic due to a row of parked cars on each side of the street. Works better than posted speed limit.
Demonstrably incorrect on my street, which has hotly contested on-street parking that narrows the roadway to a single lane. Cars have to stop and reverse into parking spaces to pass each other. Yet children play ball games in the street, and stop to move out of the way of the cars, with the cars barely needing to brake.
Children are not mindless suicide machines; they learn at a tremendous rate from their environment. The children you see around you might not survive on my street, but that's because they haven't lived there for all of their lives.