Maybe you got lucky *that time* (however many times) with your talking, reading, and driving, but every single time YOU ENDANGERED SOMEONE ELSE. Whether you want to acknowledge that fact or not is irrelevant. Plenty of people are dead today because the distracted fool behind the wheel didn't get lucky that time. By your (and Deanf's) reasoning it's perfectly acceptable to stand on a street corner and shoot your gun in random directions, just as long as you don't hit anyone this time. I didn't say the new law was perfect, but it's a step in the right direction, and it's better than nothing. At least now there will be some enforcement.
"The human brain is barely capable of operating a vehicle at highway speeds with NO distractions."
Neither false nor ridiculous, simple evolutionary fact. I read this a long time ago (sorry, I don't keep a journal of everything I read to cite it to off-topic internet forum threads). The human brain evolved to process information at walking or running speeds. And since we've only been exceeding those speeds en mass without intelligent assistance* for less than a hundred years, evolution has hardly had a chance to catch up.
*horses are generally smart enough not to run into things at full gallop.
