I would take the "just slow down" premise a little further - we need to simplify the roads, and the interaction between drivers and others.
Driving is an activity involving potentially lethal forces, yes - but it's also a cognitively complex activity that is performed in real time with the input-output cycle operating in miliseconds. Chess is just as complex, but there are more generous time limits, and we don't ask people to play chess in pouring rain. Hockey is just as fast and dangerous, but a shift only lasts a minute or so, and one can call time out. Bobsled tracks are better lit, and much shorter than most drivers’ trips - but no more complex.
Buying some reaction time by slowing drivers is helpful, and lowering impact forces when things go wrong makes eminent sense. But we have to do more to untangle the whole human factors of driving (and walking, and cycling) and how roads are built.
Road design over the last 100 years has progressively "pushed the envelope" on drivers' mental processing to make it possible to drive faster and under more harsh conditions. Bigger signs, brighter road markings, eased and banked curves....the whole intent has been to make cars able to go faster, reduce trip time, and increase auto throughput. That's not to say that there hasn't been some attention to pedestrians, but that attention has taken the back seat to road productivity.
One can vent a lot of outrage shaming people who are momentarily (or habitually, or wilfully) distracted, but that misses a big point.... much of the distraction is inherent, because the whole process asks ordinary people to exercise a very complicated and fast-moving task. It is inherently error prone.
I recently drove a freeway with signs that read "Had an accident? Move vehicles to the sides of the roads" . Ontario has similar. It says something when we are so acclimatised to accidents that we assume they are inevitable and erect signs to talk about them....if I am involved in an accident, worrying about keeping traffic moving is pretty far down my list of priorities. The whole point of the sign is to get you past being in shock.
There is also what I will unkindly call the "Jennifer Keesmatt faction" who think that we can rapidly reform our cities into some dense form that won't need cars. This is wildly unrealistic (but not a bad long term goal in itself). We are going to be relying on highways for a long time. And, we can't make roads totally unproductive in the process. We just need a different design model.
- Paul