The race is on to snag the attention of drivers via new Internet-enabled dashboard touchscreens, but metrics on exactly how popular this new browsing experience might be have largely been a mystery, until now.

Quantcast has released numbers from a study conducted over a 30-day period designed to give us some insight into the in-dash usage habits of Tesla owners.

The study, which gleaned stats from 100 million digital destinations over a 30-day period between Feb. 24 and March 23, offers a rough sketch of what the average Tesla owner's in-dash usage looks like.

"This data is based on websites using Quantcast Measure for their audience measurement," a Quantcast spokesperson told Mashable. "The Tesla browser has an identifier called a user agent, similar to a Chrome or Firefox browser. We looked at all visits to measured websites from the Tesla browser."

Predictably, usage of the 17-inch in-dash touchscreen peaks during typical commuting times, in this case, 7:30 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. and 4:30pm to 7:30 p.m., respectively.

Overall, the study found that news sites comprised the largest usage of Tesla's in-dash screen, making up 54% of the websites visited. After news, services (restaurants, finding/purchasing entertainment, auto-related services, real estate, travel, shopping) accounted for 15% of the usage, followed by entertainment (14%) and lifestyle (12%).

Within the news vertical, the study found that 26%, or roughly half of the news consumption views, were devoted to local news sites, a possible shot in the arm to beleaguered local news ventures like Patch.

Quantcast's study also found that 13% of the news consumed was financial in nature. Interestingly, the study also found that the conservative news aggregation site the DrudgeReport accounted for 10% of overall web browsing traffic.

This can be taken in a couple of ways, depending on how you parse the data. Either it means that Tesla owners, generally affluent at this point, lean conservative, or it could just be attributed to the quick loading, bare-bones design of the DrudgeReport website.

Image: Quantcast

Another interesting data point from the study reveals how usage of the Tesla tracks across the U.S. According to Quantcast's data, California is the leading source of browser views at 66%, followed by Georgia at 9%, Texas at 8% and New York and Illinois at 5% each.

What's most interesting about Quantcast's data is that it exists at all. There are numerous laws on the books in various U.S. states prohibiting the use of television screens in cars while driving. So, yes, a touchscreen tablet-style dashboard isn't a television, but it could be reasonably argued that it might be just as distracting during web browsing sessions.

In California, the state with the most web browsing activity, according to the study, the law states:

It is unlawful to drive a motor vehicle equipped with a television receiver, a video monitor, or a television or video screen, or any other similar means of usually displaying a television broadcast if the receiver is located in the vehicle at any point forward of the back of the driver’s seat.

However, the law makes exceptions for windshield and dashboard-mounted GPS devices and "systems designed to prevent the driver from viewing them." But neither of those exceptions describes the kind of in-dash touchscreen used in the Tesla.

In the next most popular web content viewing state in the study, Georgia, no such restriction exists. But in all the other states listed in the study, including Texas, Illinois, Washington, Ohio, New York, Washington, D.C., the laws regarding screens in cars are largely similar to those in California — no distracting screens allowed while driving.

Although the Tesla's dashboard screen does not have the ability to display web video, on Tesla's own user forums, some owners of the vehicle openly admit that the vehicle's in-dash screen can indeed be distracting.

In response to the growing use of media-rich mobile devices, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) released voluntary guidelines last year. The agency's guidelines recommend that vehicles be "stopped and in park" during situations involving "the display of certain types of text, including text messages, web pages, social media content."

Of course, the dashboard computer industry is still so young that we're likely to see even more guidelines crop up in the coming years. For now, we can only hope that the stats from Quantcast's study represent instances in which the vehicles were in park.

And while Quantcast's study is limited in size and duration, it nevertheless offers a hitherto unseen peek into how these new screens (including Apple's CarPlay and Ford's Sync) will really be used.

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