RedSun, You are talking my language there. I have unbordered beds from 7 foot wide to 18 feet wide. I would not have it any other way. Course, my gardens are not in the yard and do not need to be stylish., but are production beds. Yes, I have flowers too...about 300 glads and several other beauties.
I do walk some on the beds, but they are nice and loose and do need some weeding.

The 3-4' beds are for home gardeners who might not have the room for "crops", might want to have gardens that you don't step into ( no-till) or in my case, raised beds that are permanent.
3-4 ft beds are for reaching in to plant weed etc . Nancy

The narrow beds are mainly for easy picking and other maintenance. But a lot of vegetables/plants do not even need the ready access. This includes the crops, garlic, potatoes, etc. Very or no access is needed.

Narrow beds and access path waste so much land/garden. About 1/2 of the garden space is used by the paths.

For myself, I am not afraid at all to walk on the soil some. Granted, I don't want a herd of elephants or heavy implements on it. I do walk between rows, mainly to weed.

We run our own 'railroads' here and we are all different with different needs, desires, outlooks, and capabilities. For myself, I prefer few paths and then only about 16 inches...yes, I wheelbarrow down them easily.

Foot traffic in general does not compact the soil much, as opposed to the trucks, or other farm vehicles.

I remember reading a garden book. The author did a comparison. Both himself and his wife keep different beds. His wife is light (~100 lbs.?) and walks on the garden bed. The author does not.

By the end of season, the author claims, his beds (no walking) yields about 13% higher than his wife's garden beds (casual walked). I do not know how scientific his study is. But I highly doubt it. There are so many factors other than walking the the beds a few times by a light person.

After reading this post, and taking my walk around the block (2 miles in the country), I did see some great gardens in ground that had some wandering paths through them.
Most appeared to be 4-6' wide, still. I also saw a LOT of gopher damage!
My beds are 4x8 raised with hardware cloth under each bed. Unfortunately, we have such a bad gopher problem for a home garden we HAVE to have raised beds! The cats can only do so much above ground! Nancy

I haven't had much predator damage here. Last year voles/mice were bad in the sweetpotatoes though. This week I have caught 5 in traps.