I'm a big fan of courtesy and not being in people's way is something I've always striven for in life.
That's pretty much my mantra as well. On the road, in line at McDonald's, wherever. I never want to be "that guy". As in "That guy was in line for 10 minutes; he couldn't decide what he wanted before he got to the cash register??" Or... "what the fuck is that guy doing holding up that line of traffic?" Or... "where does that guy thing he is, strolling down the side walk like it's a walk in the park. Get out of the way!" Or... "what did that guy eat for dinner last night? Courtesy flush would work wonders right about now!"
80% of the time, all it takes is taking your face out of your phone, and turning your head to look behind you. Seriously. Just turn your head and look around you once in a blue moon. Maybe it'll dawn on you that there are OTHER PEOPLE on the planet besides YOU.
I think it goes much deeper than that. It's about possessing the attitude that you want to be aware of others. Cellphone usage is a symptom of a greater problem. When you break it down you find that there are a ton of people that see driving as a necessary drudgery. There are others that put more thought into their driving. The former are the Sybil Fawlty's of the world. "Oh, I know. I know." Babbling on about inane bullshit is the only way to make driving tolerable. They're the ones not paying attention. But even when they're not yammering away, they're not attentive. Their mind is elsewhere.
One situation demonstrates the difference to me perfectly, on a near daily basis. On my way home there's a turnout from a grocery story 20' or so from a stoplight. The unspoken rule is that one person gets to turn out every light cycle. I've been on both sides of this countless times since I occasionally shop at that store. If I'm on the road, I give the person pulling out about 1 second to get moving. If he's not even looking in my direction fuck him. When the light changes I will be looking at him and it'll be pretty clear I want him to go. If he's confused, fuck him. It tends to go about 50/50. Ideally I shouldn't even have to look at him, but that's expecting too much. When I'm the one pulling out what I've noticed is that about 75% of the drivers (and there is a gender distinction here, BTW) understand how this should work. The number of people who deliberately refuse to let me in are statistically meaningless. However, there are plenty of drivers who are just completely unaware that somebody's looking to pull out. They're not necessarily yammering on their phones, they're just not really focusing on others around them. In fact, in that case if they are on their phones there's no problem because I'm just going to pull out before they've even noticed the light is green. Mostly they're just mindless drones moving from one light to the next, oblivious to the world around them.