Even inexpensive cars are loaded with safety features these days. A sub-$14,000 Hyundai Elantra has six airbags and antilock brakes; a sub-$16,000 Scion xB has all that plus an electronic stability system. Move up to a luxury car and you can get swiveling headlights, smart cruise control, lane departure warning systems, and more.
From an automaker's standpoint, high-end safety features serve the same purpose as any advanced technology - they help make premium cars more marketable.
At the cheaper end, things like side airbags and stability control become ubiquitous thanks to competitive pressure and, sometimes, federal mandates.
Virtually all new cars have tire pressure monitoring systems that warn drivers about over- or underinflated tires; that's because the government mandated the feature be made standard by 2008.
By early next decade, the federal government will also have seen to it that antilock brakes, electronic stability systems, and side airbags are standard in virtually every car produced.
Many cars today already have side-impact airbags, which expand from the seat or door to protect an occupant's chest, and side curtain airbags, which extend from the ceiling to protect the head. This is largely because, in 2003, automakers disclosed plans to meet stringent side-impact standards by the 2010 model year.
Both types of airbags will be all but required by 2013 because the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration will require vehicles to pass a battery of tests that emphasize head protection for shorter drivers by late 2012. Those tests will include some larger trucks that were exempt from the automakers' 2010 commitment, so they should promote improvements in the crashworthiness of a wider range of vehicles, NHTSA spokeswoman Elly Martin said.
Russ Raider, a spokesman for the privately funded Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, said the 2012 requirements will expand the physical area that the curtain airbags must cover.
Electronic stability systems, meanwhile, will be mandatory by 2012. They're well on their way: About half of all 2007 nameplates already include the system standard, according to IIHS, and another 13 percent offer it as an option. Known by a variety of names, stability systems use antilock brakes and a network of sensors to keep a car on its intended course.
Even without federal mandates, many other features are making inroads across the industry. Among them are active front head restraints, which move forward to cushion the occupant's head if the car gets rear-ended, and roll-sensing side curtain airbags, which can stay inflated for several seconds during a rollover.
As cars integrate more safety features, prices will likely rise. NHTSA estimates side-impact and side curtain airbags cost around $250 per car, while electronic stability systems cost $111 in cars that already have antilock brakes. In today's market, the features will often cost you more than that: Stability control adds $495 to
Technology costs are a huge concern to automakers.
"If we were to adopt every safety technology that's available today, cars would cost twice as much as they do," Harrison said.
The silver lining, however, is that those prices are likely to go down over time.
"There are some economies of scale when you start putting [safety features] across the board," he said. "Take tire pressure monitors, for example. Today those sensors are far less expensive to the [automakers] because they're just producing so many more of them."
Brett Smith, an analyst at the Center for Automotive Research, said buyers expect safety features to be standard. How much extra they're willing to pay for them depends on how well the safety benefits are communicated.
"If you asked 99 percent of car buyers, 'Gee, do you feel better that your car has a tire pressure monitor,' they're going to say, 'Sure,' " Smith said. "But then if you say, 'It's a couple hundred dollars added cost,' they're going to look at you and say, 'Why?'
"Car companies know that there are technologies available that can save lives," he said. "The challenge for them is to deliver [the features] in an effective manner, but also to make the consumer aware of them and willing to accept that added value as being something to pay for."
