1. People died. A lot. Ralph Nader, who is today probably better known for being a former presidential candidate for the Green Party in the US, first got famous with his 1965 book “Unsafe at Any Speed” that brought just how dangerous cars were to the public attention. Which led to a ton of laws that regulated the manufacture and operation of motor vehicles. It was similar to how Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle” was with the food industry.

2. Density has increased. It was easier to get away with driving when there were fewer cars on the road, fewer intersections, fewer buildings and other property nearby. Our signs and signals have grown more complicated. I live in a major US city, where there is a main thoroughfare that cuts through the southern suburbs with a 5 lane stroad (2 lanes each way with a central turning lane). There are traffic lights every couple hundred feet to allow interesections with feeder roads. My grandfather still tells the stories about how when he was a teenager, that was a 3-lane DIRT road, where the center was still a turn lane. He could drive for miles before getting to the densest part of the city where there was 1 traffic light.

He also tells the story of how the police radios used to only be one-way, so officers in cars could receive messages from the station but not send anything back. On top of that, their big heavy cruisers were slower and less maneuverable than his motorcycle, so he used to commonly blow by and ignore cops trying to pull him over. It was a completely different world.

You’re kidding, right?

We rode without seatbelts in the back of stations wagons. Worse: just ready to fly free in pickup beds. It was almost expected that people would drink and drive.

All that said, you can still eat, drink, and change stations in most places and it is far, far less distracting than phones.

I walk a lot. Even in that much lower speed, much lower stakes situation, I can tell you that eating/drinking is generally completely fine but give somebody a phone and they turn into a blind moron with no concept of other people. Even I’m guilty of it, if I’m trying to skip ads on a podcast or something and I absent-mindedly look down at my phone without getting out of the way and stopping first, by the time I look up I’ll have travelled much further than I thought and have been surprised by people popping out of alleyways or crossing roads etc who are now in front of me.

The number of times I’ve seen people physically walk into lampposts, other people, or just slowly sway side to side on the pavement, taking the whole thing up, while they dick around on their phones… People get out of elevators or up stairs and immediately stop and pull out their phones, blocking the exit for everyone else.

You can’t use a phone and do anything else at the same time unfortunately.

They didn’t have seat belts either. So simplest explanation is that people were still figuring out what safety features were necessary for a new invention that started gaining traction. Lot of safety regulations that came into play happened after disasters like building codes or work place regulations or food expiration. People learn from tragedy.

Texting on a tiny keyboard on a phone requires much more visual attention than finding a button (which you can feel for anyway), and changing a radio station which you only need to listen for. A drink should also be okay if you’re not raising your head full tilt.

Edit: that said, eating is also a no-no; either because it is a resting/social activity which may reduce concentration, or because accidents happen while you’re eating and you’re going to get distracted wiping sauce off your clothes.

You could make a sandwich in your lap and it wouldn’t be as distracting as scrolling social media on your phone.

States are likely to have laws against “distracted driving” or “reckless driving”. Those likely encompass much of the driving while texting or fiddling with controls. Unless a cop directly saw the action this are usually charges levied after an accident happens and do nothing to prevent it. Once enough crashes are attributed to a narrower set of actions, public opinion can be swayed to support action against that narrower set. Now with a specific “no texting while driving” law, cops can pull you over simply for holding a phone. They don’t need to see you do something that would constitute “distracted” or “reckless” driving to ticket you.

Lol my friend, people regularly drank (alcohol) while driving in the 70s and 80s.

People just did not give a fuck.

Mildly related - I vividly remember back in the 90s on my drivers test in Florida, it was illegal to have a screen facing the driver. Period. Now, what they were aiming at was making sure the driver wasn’t watching a portable TV while driving. But the center console screen in modern cars would 100% qualify. Heck, mounting your GPS or cell phone to the dash so that it’s hands free would still be illegal by that law. So I have to assume something in Florida’s driving laws changed. Always been curious what, but I moved away shortly after then, never bothered to follow up.

I don’t see how eating and drinking are comparable. You can do those without taking your eyes off the road. A changing the radio stations should only take seconds.

Texting will take up most of your attention for minutes.

Better question, why is every moron free to legally text and drive if they glue the phone to the dash first? Those mounts are driving me up a fuckin wall, I literally saw one dead center on a steering wheel hump.

Same reason lead was in everything you used and rvery building made with asbestos. They knew it was dangerous. Regulators didn’t care.

Because for the most part, you can do all those things with only removing your eyes from the road for a few seconds, if at all. You’re still focused mostly on driving.

When using your phone, you’re not paying attention at all to the road, and looking away for far longer. That’s the danger.

Most of the software on smartphones is built from the ground up to grab every bit of user attention it can and this makes phone use more dangerous than eating or fiddling with the radio. So much so that law makers and law enforcers notice and treat phone use differently from other drive-time activities.