Additionally we could require all phones to support the SafeDriving protocol, and there be dash mounted camera in all cars with appropriate computer vision to identify unsafe phone use while driving lock ALL phones within the car or slow car to the curb.
If you're the passenger and want to unlock the phone...take a selfie? More psychology than tech here.
This wouldn't affect mass transit commuters since they wouldn't have a car insurance app. The insurance company could sell it as a way to get additional savings...I recently did something similar with safeco that was way more invasive.
Not perfect, but if Im Geico; I have a team mulling over something similar as an easy way to drop accident rates...?
That's why people are against it - the idea of passengers returning to the pre-smartphone era while traveling seems to be considered by most people totally outrageous and and unacceptable price to pay for lowering the accident rate, which has climbed almost solely to due smartphones.
What's totally outrageous and unacceptable is the idea that my phone can tell me when I'm allowed to use it or not, based on arbitrary rules set up by tech clowns who are not in my current situation and do not know why I might need it.
It's frankly asinine to suggest I should not be able to look up a map of a city while riding a bus because someone else might be texting and driving.
Most people would find this outrageous because it is.