Parents could be encouraged to park outside school gates amid fears that measures to restrict traffic at pick-up and drop-off times have actually created more dangers for children.
Restrictions such as 20mph zones and double yellow lines have been difficult to police and could have led to motorists driving faster in these areas, council bosses admit.
Graham Plant, Norfolk County Council's cabinet member for highways, infrastructure and transport, said: "A blanket coverage of 20mph across the county sounds good, but you haven't got 470 policemen stood there policing every single school across the county."
Martin Chisholm, business manager at West Norfolk Council, said that if council officers cleared roads of parents parking on double yellow lines to drop off children it was a “doubled-edged sword” as it sped up traffic.
He added that making drivers move their cars to park elsewhere "frustrated parents" and they "put their foot down" to find another spot.
"What we are doing, is arguably, making some of those scenarios less safe than they were originally,” he said.
"Let's face it, when little Tommy does fall off the kerb, because inevitably, sooner or later he will do, I would much prefer it was in front of a vehicle going at crawling pace, because that is all they could, in the environment this parking has created, than that vehicle going at 30mph because we cleared the road to enable it to do 30mph or even 20mph."
Mr Chisholm added: "My ask of the highways engineers would be to think very carefully about restrictions around schools and make sure they are absolutely fit for the area's intended purpose.
"There's got to be a balance between allowing an amount of parking and restricting it in those areas where, really, you shouldn't have it - at junctions and the such-like."
Safety outside schools is an ongoing concern and Charity Brake, which campaigns to boost road safety, recently called for 20mph speed limits to prevent child crash deaths.
Department for Transport figures show 2,456 children aged under 16 were killed or seriously injured on Britain’s roads last year.
Mr Plant said: "What we have at the moment are a load of people turning up for half an hour in the morning and half an hour in the evening at a road outside a school and you cannot speed because of the weight of traffic that's there.
"That might be the safest option, rather than opening the road up and having cars whizzing up there at 20mph. 20mph might not sound a lot, but if you're going to be hit by a car, it's a lot.
"20mph is not the answer to everything and there are more complicated scenarios."
Mr Chisholm added: "If we can promote responsible parking, rather than no parking, we might have a better chance of success."
READ MORE: Norfolk drivers hit with record £1.2m in parking fines
The comments were made after the issue was raised by Martin Booth, Labour Broadland district councillor for Sprowston East, at a meeting of the Norfolk Parking Partnership - a collaboration between councils.
Mr Booth said there were occasions when parked parents stopped buses getting down roads.
He said: "It is the irresponsible parking. The best traffic calming is parked cars, I agree, but it's that the parents are so unreasonable."
Brake campaigns manager Lucy Straker said: "We speak to lots of schools where teachers are doing everything they can to make the roads near their school safe, but ultimately they need support from their local council and decision-makers.
"Why do we have to wait until a child is killed before we act?"
What happened with experimental school traffic bans?
An 18-month experiment saw Norfolk County Council select six schools to take part in its 'School Streets' scheme to tackle the issue of parking outside schools.
Sites in Norwich, Costessey and Wymondham were selected by the council, to look into what happened when timed road closures were introduced around schools.
Certain streets were shut to vehicles during the school run, so children could travel more safely and sustainably.
But a shortage of volunteers to help with road closures saw two of the schemes "paused" - and three more never started.
A report on the scheme found, where it was run, it increased the number of children walking or cycling to school.
Councillors are to consider whether such schemes could be run without such a demand on volunteer time - with suggestions cameras could be used to enforce traffic bans.
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