I’ve read the article already and I’m well aware. And like I said, it depends on what the law says on phone use. It’s not as simple as ‘oh she wasn’t holding her phone so she wasn’t using it’. It depends on case law, how phone use is defined and whether the law is using a kind of prophylactic rule.

You can get fined for texting and driving while you’re standing still. It’s not something that you’d be able to say makes sense based on an article like this, but looking at case law and how the law was written, it does make sense.

Personally I think it makes a lot of sense to have prophylactic rules in place for what constitutes phone use. There is generally no reason why a phone should be laying in one’s lap while driving except to be used illegally whilst driving, so such a rule could help enforcement and save lives.

It depends a lot on what the law says I’d say. Just like having an open container of alcohol in your car is illegal in many places, it’s not a bad thing per se if having a phone on one’s lap is treated the same way as if it’s being used.

Unlike what the article says, phone use in a car is not seen as a minor traffic violation in many places. In the US literally hundreds of people die each year due to phone use while driving specifically.