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There’s no end to news stories discussing the latest and greatest breakthroughs in car safety technology. Things such as forward collision and lane departure warning, side-view assist, and electronic stability control are already a reality, and self-driving car tech isn’t too far behind. As a San Francisco car accident attorney, though, I often wonder how long it will take such life-saving technologies to become commonplace.

A new report may have the answer I’m looking for. According to the Highway Loss Data Institute, it takes THREE decades for new safety tech to filter out to 95% of the vehicles on the street, and even longer than that to reach 100%. That final 5% is due to a number of people who love and hang on to their cars for as long as possible.

Most new safety features take years of research and are often quite expensive, so at first they only appear on high-end, luxury automobiles. It takes time for the feature to trickle down to less pricy models. Given that about 10 million cars are bought in a year, if each of these vehicles had a new safety feature which came standard, it would take approximately 24 years for a feature to reach total proliferation.

The technologies I mentioned in the first paragraph, for instance, are only currently available in about 11% of cars. And they won’t be widespread until 2049. Estimates show that if all vehicles had this technology, there would be 1.9 million fewer accidents and one in three fatal crashes would be avoided.

As a car accident attorney in San Francisco, too often I’ve encountered a wreck that could have been avoided had an older model car been equipped with some of the safety equipment on various luxury models. Therefore, I look forward to the most advanced technology today to become commonplace, with even better safety breakthroughs hot on its heels.

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