What will protect is taking bicycles off motor vehicle roadways, and laying down new, much narrower bicycle-exclusive roads all over instead. It doesn't make sense to mix the slower and vulnerable bicycle traffic with the faster and safer motor vehicles!

We could also slow down the motor vehicles to the speeds where drivers can react to pedestrians and cyclists.

And improve education all around for road users, including pedestrians, to widen the understanding of how individual decisions affect the community. For example, starting to cross the road at the end of the crosswalk signal leads to fewer cars able to turn right, which leads to more congestion, etc. Trying to make it across the intersection when traffic is moving slowly and blocking crosswalks and cross traffic. Opening the driver's side door with your opposite hand to look in the side view mirror or blind spot for cyclists.

Thanks to LaWs, people do this with their phone on their lap instead of held up with a forward field of view. Yay?

Neither will anything else, so that's not really a competitive disadvantage.

Well, a wall will. It might even dissuade them from trying.