Well, if you want to be silly about it, by your argument shouldn't we make mistakes illegal and then slaughter everyone because everyone makes mistakes?
That is not my argument.
You see where I said "an erased phone is not a serious problem therefore it doesn't need legislationg" Where did that give you the idea that I think manslaughter is OK?
It is certainly possible that the same action could have caused loss of much personal data of sentimental and/or direct financial value, cut off communications at an important moment with all kinds of serious consequences
Even if it did cause those things, those are not serious consequences. Problems serious enough for legislation are things which are likely to result in a high rate of injury and death, or be long term dangerous/injurious to a lot of people (eg. shoddy building codes).
If you really want nationwide legislation forbidding companies from letting employees use personal phones to read email because they might lose their only copy of sentimental pictures, and prefer that to suggesting the person have a second copy of their pictures, then we have incredibly different views on how life is and should ideally be.
If that is your position, then we have very different ethics here.
> This was not a serious accident
Several people in this discussion seem to bring that up, but as far as I can see we don't know either way. It is certainly possible that the same action could have caused loss of much personal data of sentimental and/or direct financial value, cut off communications at an important moment with all kinds of serious consequences, left a driver stranded with no navigation to get them back to familiar territory, etc. Even if that didn't happen in this particular case, it was pure luck.