Parent wasn't talking about answering calls while on the road. Parent was referring to missing a call. If they need to have their phone on, that's completely reasonable. Maybe they're even an emergency driver. It doesn't mean they won't pull over when there's a call.

Having the phone on doesn't mean talking on the phone while driving. In fact, I'm pretty sure siri is disabled during phone calls, so this is a feel-good farce with very dangerous implications. One that's more likely to cause crashes than prevent them. Thankfully this happened in a low density country with safe roads.