Passengers would be inconvenienced, but basically every phone-related crash would be prevented.
Snapchat was not worth my cousin's life.
More than a few pedestrians walk and use their phone, walk right out in the traffic, or other situations (some hilarious walking right into poles and getting laughed at on the internet.
I know in a few nations this may be a hard concept, but here in the US, it is absolutely NOT true that "pedestrians always have the right of way"... no no no
In these cases, you can be run over and you (or your family) will have no legal recourse against the driver. Zero, nada, zilch. So in the legal sense, it is not true that a pedestrian always has the right to exist at any point on the earth without being run over.
In a moral sense, perhaps every driver has an obligation to try not to run over pedestrians. That might create a “right” in some moral/ethics frameworks, but it doesn’t exist as a legal concept in my state.
The exceptions are street crossings or purely pedestrian streets, which have to be marked as such.
I don't expect this to be different anywhere in the world, since most paved roads are paved for vehicles, you don't really need pavement that much for pedestrians (well, you kind of need it for pedestrian with baby strollers or wheeled luggage & co).
"Le piéton est l'usager le plus protégé par le code de la route : il a, quoiqu'il arrive, toujours la priorité sur la chaussée"
> Pour un piéton victime d’un accident, on retiendra faute inexcusable s’il «franchit des glissières de sécurité pour traverser une voie à grande circulation (alors qu’un passage souterrain existe à côté)», s’il «fait un effort particulier pour braver les règles de sécurité», ou encore s’il «contourne délibérément les obstacles lui interdisant l’accès à une voie rapide» ;
In 99% of the cases a pedestrian would have to go over a barrier to end up on a highway, as part of regular traffic.
I'm not counting someone from a broken down car on the side of the road as a pedestrian, since those are covered by different laws.