This is about the only way to enable intelligent control over device functionality. Absent this additional link, a modern cell phone can't tell a driver from an occupant.

With this, Apple and the car companies offer people a carrot so that they pair their device [1] and now they can limit the distractions: you can control the apps that are available on the car interface, you can pare down the notifications they're receiving (enable DND mode by default while driving), you can disable direct use of the paired device while the car is in motion, etc.

[1] The carrot being GPS and music-selection features already available on many modern car dashboards.

Thereby ensuring a situation where the person takes their eyes off the road and looks at their seat for their phone, picks it up, and starts reading and replying to texts while barreling down the road in a high velocity chunk of steel.

That's what happens now. Apple's technology aims to prevent that.

>Even dictating a text message takes some cognitive load.

Yes it does. It also is much safer than doing it on your phone as people can and will continue to do, even in states where it is illegal. Apple isn't a legislature. They can't tackle unsafe driver behavior by crafting laws, but they can do so via software offerings.

If you can't talk while you drive, then you shouldn't have passengers either.

That figure should be normalised to make the comparison fair. Presumably, there were more cars on the road in 2011 than in 2010.