They must have some research going into touchscreen enhanced distracted driving. But I guess they must not have gathered enough data pointing that way, or something?
I was at NHTSA a decade ago. They were in talks to acquire a petabyte-size collection of videos of drivers' faces to study distraction, but there was no funding for a system that could hold it, so it never happened.
Unsure of what happened with that initiative, but I hope it gets revived. Today there are many great options for efficiently analyzing video. Storage is also cheaper.
Side Note: Last night I was driving home behind a guy whose phone was mounted to his dashboard and was playing some video on YouTube. While maneuvering to pass by him, I could clearly see his eyes locked on the phone screen instead of the road. At least with Android, maybe Google could create a safety feature that prevents both Maps and YouTube from running simultaneously.
