I'm not a pilot, but my understanding is it is quite different to driving in terms of attention — a cruising pilot can easily look at a screen for 5 or 10 seconds (?) entirely safely, whereas a driver might struggle to even stay in lane looking at a screen for 10 seconds. So a touch screen is fine for a pilot but probably not good for a driver.
I am a pilot and you are exactly right. With an airplane autopilot coupled to a modern GPS, once you're cruising, you can pretty much crawl into the back seat and take a nap until it's time to land. (That's a little bit of an exaggeration but not much.)
