The real problem is situational awareness.
A law that punishes a person who is using both hands texting on their phone on a crowded highway at rush hour the same as it punishes someone who reaches over and touches their screen for a second while at a stop light, isn’t really dealing with the issue.
And a law that punishes the second person, while leaving the woman who is putting on her makeup untouched, is simply not applying the same standards.
I bet there are 20-year-olds who text while driving who are more able to respond to an emergency than an 80-year-old with both hands on the wheel and his eyes fixed forward.
This is not to say I don’t want to crack down on idiots who are holding their phones and typing, while their car wanders around the lanes of traffic.
I sort of agree. In an ideal world the only criteria would be how much competence and attention the driver has, and that being objectively measured.
But people have made the same argument about drinking ‘I drive better after 3 drinks than some people do sober’, and it holds zero legal weight.
Nearly every law leaves some similar situation unaddressed, but we still need laws. Maybe that 20 year old can drive better texting, but I’m not willing to bet my life, or the lives of my loved ones on it, and how to objectively discriminate between the 20 year old who CAN and the 23 year old who can’t?