Then surely Europe shares that trends and shows growth in pedestrian death.

But that isn't the case at all, maybe Europeans are immune to smartphones: https://road-safety.transport.ec.europa.eu/document/download...

Other countries have smartphones too.

Yep. The linked NYT article has this weak-sounding line -

> Most other wealthy countries haven’t seen similar increases, suggesting that possible culprits like smartphones don’t tell the whole story.

- but it is so focused on telling a long-winded story that I didn't bother checking whether they'd really tried to correct for that. (My cynical guess is "no" - since if they really cared and had ruled phones out, they'd clearly say so.)

Surely someone somewhere will bring to bear a solution that will disable all but voice calls on smartphones while the smartphone is paired to the car and the car is moving but allow for the devices of minors in a moving vehicle to still function like smartphones. They might also use interior cameras to ascertain who is driving and which device should be neutered but for emergency communication.

Yes, people would be annoyed at first but they also will experience a sigh of relief that they don't have to reply to a boss's or co-worker's text in the middle of a commute or running deliveries, etc.

Almost like we need a study to figure out what the actual cause is. Oh, that's what the article is about, the study.

that's called a hypothesis. now go author a study to test it, like the study being reported on. hypotheses without evidence don't stand up to hypotheses that have been tested.