While attending a recent car show, I came across a reproduction window sticker displayed in a mint-condition 1966 Mercury Marauder.

What caught my eye was the list of standard equipment. Under the subheading "safety equipment" were such high-tech features as four-way emergency flashers and a driver's-side door mirror. These did have a marginal impact on accident avoidance, and they added little to the overall cost of repair if damaged in a collision.

In today's world, safety equipment is a lot flashier—and accident-avoidance technology has advanced exponentially in both functionality and cost. It includes a combination of:

• Telematics, a broad range of technology that captures and communicates raw vehicle data, which is overlaid with GIS map data like road type and speed limits
• Black-box technologies like on-board diagnostics parameter IDs (OBD-II PID codes that request data from a vehicle and are used as a diagnostic tool)
• Event data recorders (EDRs) that developed out of vehicle air-bag technology

The impact of these advances on automotive claims is significant—and will continue to be. While accident-avoidance technologies hold the promise of reducing crashes and the frequency of claims, the complex technologies in place in the modern automobile have great potential to actually increase claims severity.