US vehicle safety regulators say they have opened a formal safety investigation into 580,000 Tesla vehicles sold since 2017 over the carmaker’s decision to allow games to be played on the front centre touchscreen.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said its preliminary evaluation covered various 2017-2022 model year Tesla Model 3, S, X, and Y vehicles.

This functionality, referred to as “Passenger Play,” “may distract the driver and increase the risk of a crash”,  the agency said

NHTSA said it had “confirmed that this capability has been available since December 2020 in Tesla ‘Passenger Play’-equipped vehicles”. Before then, the game feature “was enabled only when the vehicle was in Park.”

Tesla did not immediately comment.

NHTSA opens probe into Tesla in-vehicle gaming feature – Automotive News https://t.co/g1KbL2wNE6

— Clomaes (@clomaes) December 22, 2021

NHTSA said it “will evaluate aspects of the feature, including the frequency and use scenarios of Tesla ‘Passenger Play’ “.

Earlier this month, the New York Times highlighted the game feature, prompting NHTSA to say it was in discussions with Tesla about the feature.

The agency noted earlier in December that distracted driving accounts for a significant number of US road deaths – 3142 in 2019 alone.

Safety advocates have said official figures underestimate the problem because not all distracted drivers admit the issue after crashes.

The NYT said the Tesla update added three games – solitaire, a jet fighter and conquest strategy scenario – and added vehicles had warnings reading: “Playing while the car is in motion is only for passengers.”

It reported that a button asked for confirmation that the player was a passenger, though a driver could play simply by pressing the button.

In 2013, NHTSA issued guidelines to encourage carmakers “to factor safety and driver distraction prevention into their designs and adoption of infotainment devices in vehicles”.

The guidelines “recommend that in-vehicle devices be designed so that they cannot be used by the driver to perform inherently distracting secondary tasks while driving”, the agency said.

In August, the agency opened a safety investigation into 765,000 Tesla vehicles over its driver-assistance system Autopilot after a series of crashes involving the system and parked emergency vehicles.

A preliminary evaluation is a first step before NHTSA decides whether to upgrade a probe to an engineering analysis. That must happen before the agency can demand a recall.