Smartphones, and mobile phones in general, make drivers less attentive to external events while driving. It was fine before that, so I don't see why you think we should be blaming humans?

Because it wasn't fine before that. Most drivers take irrational risks, drive with zero margin, and are generally fucking stupid behind the wheel. The other half are even worse. Seriously, there needs to be far more restrictions and punitive damages to bad drivers. With all the media attention on terrorism, there are 10 times as many deaths in the US every year due to stupid drivers as there were on 9-11.

I agree completely, but the human factor will only be removed once we have fully autonomous vehicles. Until then, we need humans to operate vehicles; this is the base case.

Now, do smartphones make humans worse at driving, or does their use while driving still result in the base case? My argument is that smartphone use does in fact significantly worsen a human's ability to drive properly. As a result, I believe that, for the time being, we need to somehow tackle the issue of smartphone use while operating a vehicle.

Agreed.

You have to address the root cause - humans, because before smartphones and their apps, it was being distracted while fiddling with CD/tape players.

Eating and applying makeup (women) also contributed.

Humans have to recognize that driving demands 100% of their attention.

We will eventually address the root cause; self-driving cars are around the corner. Unfortunately, we cannot do that now. Therefore, we should address the second biggest cause: smartphones.

Besides, eating, doing make-up, and fiddling with a CD player are absolutely nothing compared to what people do on smartphones nowadays while cruising in a hunk of metal at 60 mph.

Humans were around before this development though.

So, mass transit.