A recent special report in the London Financial Times, has highlighted crash avoidance technology as the big new development priority for car manufacturers.

The report discusses how after years of development of vehicle protection, the focus is now switching to prevention, with systems that can either mean total accident avoidance or minimise accident damage.  

Pressure for such developments appears to be coming not so much from drivers, but from insurers who are believed to be willing to look at lowering premiums for cars with advanced crash avoidance technology.

Lane departure warning systems, crash imminent braking, electronic stability control and radar based side collision detection, are all on the development agenda. However, this is all relatively new technology and as such is expensive. This is something that could hinder widespread early technology adoption, especially as consumers have generally shown a reluctance to pay a premium for safety systems over other extras.

The FT report also looked at the future of self-drive cars, with experts concluding that it is likely to be at least twenty years before they could really make an impact. This they say is not because of technology restrictions, but because of the multitude of legal wrangles that such vehicles crashing could produce.