"My personal view is that [the insurance industry] is going to become more proactive in the future as they try to anticipate what could happen and try to modify behavior before the claim event occurs," he says. "Proactive loss control is going to become more of a feature of claims than purely aspirational. If you can modify the behavior you can prevent the claim and yield a far superior result. If [an event] doesn't exist you certainly have a better answer. You are going to see that as pay as you drive starts to evolve more toward modifying driver behavior. Loss control behavior will become more of the norm than trying to out-execute the problem."

Costonis doesn't believe such breakthroughs are that far away.

"Trying to marry data sources that are popping up, as rapid as we've seen consumer data coming to the fore, the trend is actually more impressive when you look at connected devices," he says. "The challenge is how does the insurance company consume and make use of the data. The trend is a few years away, not 10 years. It's probably closer than we think."

The NTSB points out that these technologies are available today in many vehicles, usually as options that a vehicle owner can add, and some technologies are not even required to meet performance standards.

The NTSB believes the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration should establish performance standards where still needed and mandate that these technologies be included as standard equipment in cars and commercial motor vehicles alike. Their full life-saving and crash-avoidance potential will not be realized until supported by federal rulemaking and related standards, according to the NTSB