Red herring?

Mobile phone use while driving is of course a no-no, but it’s a convenient scapegoat for traffic authorities who refuse to reform a system that is intrinsically dangerous. If mobile phone use is banned on the ground that it distracts us and takes our eyes off the road, should traffic lights, speed cameras and speed limits be banned for the same reason? In four years, the death toll from accidents involving phones is 25. In the same four years, there have been 100,000 deaths and serious injuries that do not involve phone use. While radio phone-ins and newspapers purvey shock horror at mobile phone misuse, they ignore the unspeakable casualty toll which is largely due to the dysfunctional traffic control system.