By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. safety regulators said Tuesday that additional information has been sought from Tesla Inc (NASDAQ;) Inc to assist in their investigation into 580,000 vehicles. The probe concerns Tesla’s decision to permit passengers to play games on the center touchscreen.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened December a preliminary evaluation for 2017-2022 Tesla Model 3 SX, X, and/or Y vehicles. This was in response to the “Passenger Play”, which the agency stated “may distract the drivers and increase the chance of a collision.”

NHTSA would like to see any related crash reports and Tesla should provide a chronology of events supporting its risk assessment in “the employment of front seats non-driving-related tasks from In-vehicle Based Devices even if it is only intended for the front seat passenger.”

Tesla didn’t immediately reply to our request for comment

NHTSA announced in December that the capability was available in Tesla vehicles equipped with ‘Passenger Play.’ The game function was previously only available when the vehicle was in Park.

NHTSA was informed by Tesla on December 23 that it will no longer allow video games to play while Tesla’s cars are moving.

Tesla told NHTSA that a software upgrade would lock “PassengerPlay” and render it inoperable when the vehicle’s motion is being controlled, NHTSA stated.

NHTSA requested Tesla answer questions by March 4. This included “trip counts” in which Tesla used the shift indicator to drive. It also includes usage in which vehicle sensors failed to detect any occupants in the front seat. NHTSA also requests data on “gameplay concurrently with driver intervention measures and active safety measures”.

In August, after several crashes that involved the driver-assistance program Autopilot as well as parked emergency vehicles and other incidents, the agency launched a safety investigation to investigate 765,000 Teslas.

NHTSA must conduct a preliminary evaluation before it can decide whether to upgrade the probe to an engineer analysis. This is required before NHTSA can request a recall.

Daimler (OTC)’s Mercedes-Benz recalls 227 U.S.-bound vehicles on November 29th because vehicle infotainment systems could be activated while driving and cause distractions for drivers.

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