Yeah, absolutely. 5th Gear covered this extremely well using Volvo, who are world famous for their safety emphasis.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emtLLvXrrFs

10 years from now all new car's will probably self driving.

That's an 22+ year old Volvo without airbags. "Volvo was the first to introduce side airbags and installed them as standard equipment in all models from 1995." First 940 was produced in 1990 so it could be 27 years old.

PS: That Moderate overlap / frontal offset test configuration is relatively recent in crash testing. http://www.iihs.org/iihs/ratings/ratings-info/frontal-crash-...

I will bet against you here and now. In July 2027, I bet at least 5% of new cars sold in the US will not have full self-driving capability. Meaning they will be unable to drive between two arbitrary street addresses in the US without a licensed human operator.

So your being that we'll have at most 95% self driving cars in ten years? That seems uncontroversial... Unless there's a law banning human driven cars by then, I would expect to see that level of ownership just from the people who like the act of driving cars.

If you're betting against driving between two arbitrary street addresses, I'll bet that there won't be a single capable car.

Using towns in northern Alaska not connected to the main graph is cheating! :)

That video is from 2009. I'd argue that mechanical safety innovation has slowed quite a bit in the last eight years. The real question is whether the recent electronic safety features: backup cameras, lane departure, blind spot warnings are worth the new car premium.

Not sure what you mean by "mechanical safety" but in addition to advances in energy dissipating crash structures, the use of advanced and high strength steels has risen dramatically in the past couple years.

But that's a 30-year old Volvo, no? In 2017, buying a 10 year old car would mean getting that Renault.

Well, I'd have put money on the Volvo coming out better. Thanks for the link.

Yes. Stability control is now mandatory (it was rare 11 years ago), antilock breaks are also mandatory, lane deaparture warning and blind spot warning are ubiquitous, phone interface(hands free) is a lot more prevalent, tire pressure monitors were a novelty in 1999, the number of airbags has increased, automatic emergency breaking is now a thing. Huge number of improvements in the last 10 to 20 years.

Antilock brakes and stability control are mandatory now, but they've been common for a long time. Most cars probably still don't have blind spot and lane departure warnings standard, and I'm not sure how much safety they add.

My sense is that if cars are safer now, compared apples to apples (i.e. a base model mid size sedan) to ten years ago, it's marginal. And the same will be true (driverless cars potentially excepted) in five years.

The new technologies have really contributed to making cars safer. Consumer Reports says that automatic emergency braking (AEB) and forward-collision warning (FCW) should be standard equipment.

http://www.consumerreports.org/car-safety/positive-impact-of...