Swedish Steve -
As a mere engineer, I understand the problems of high altitude flight with the proximity of stall speed and overspeed.
With the known problems of pitot icing (though I have never seen it) why don't you pilots just stop flying so high when there are storms about? Would it not be easy to mandate a descent to a lower FL where the speed range is greater so you have more time to react if something goes wrong?
Yes I know it costs money, but so do crashes.
BINGO.....you done broke de code !! Unfortunately, conservatism no longer exists in the airline industry. Flights are treated as "missions" now. And I don't want to hear from other pilots on here that "all pilots aren't like that." I know that, but it only takes a few to give us all a bad name.