Sounds like the opinion of someone who knows minimum braking distances still exist even when going slowly.

If pedestrians or especially children are present, one should be driving very slowly. 15mph sounds about right. At that speed one is unlikely to kill, since even if a pedestrian "jumps out" (an event that is vanishingly less common than drivers not paying attention), one has enough time to stop.

Most drivers drive too fast. (Me too!) Most drivers have not killed anyone. All drivers who have killed someone, were driving too fast at the time. Many drivers will disagree with me, but they are simply wrong about appropriate speeds, and we will all be safer when robocars are driving for them.

Even when the minimum braking distance is not small enough to avoid hitting a pedestrian, a lower speed will impart a lower kinetic energy vastly reducing the odds of fatally injuring the victim.

This statement is either very poorly thought out, or needlessly accusatory and inflammatory.

I would say that if you claim that a massively complex system like public traffic, with thousands of participants, many of them badly or completely untrained, can be organized in such a fashion that any and all accidents can be prevented, the burden falls on you to show how.

This subthread is not about the massively complex system. Rather we are discussing the good judgment of individual drivers. Even if my statement were not literally true (the best kind, and it literally is), it would still be good practice for all drivers to commit themselves to driving slowly enough to prevent collisions with pedestrians.