Most laws and rules came from situations where peoples forgot about intelligence and needed to be protected from themselves. The sad part is laws and rules target everybody, even peoples who do use their intelligence.
I can't count the amount of time I got hit while walking by somebody texting or reading a message. Everybody walking downtown witnessed at some point a phone reader hitting a wall or pole, getting stuck in a revolving door, falling off a sidewalk. Or those who get such important messages, they stop dead in their tracks, causing peoples behind them to hit them or to fall while trying to avoid the collision. Or the hot coffee spilled all over our cloths because somebody was so important his business couldn't wait so he was texting while walking, not looking where he was going.
Even when driving we see pedestrians not looking where they are going and almost getting killed because they are too busy looking at their phone screen to see what's going on around them.
20 years ago, we could survive without being in contact 100% of the time, why shouldn't we be able to survive now? When a message is so important, move away from traffic (pedestrian traffic and cars) then stop moving before reading/replying. That is not complicated and nobody will get hurt because of it.
It is sad to get to that point but, if somebody had the idea of that law, it is because some peoples had a behavior that triggered it.
