During the 1980s and 1990s, association and seminar leaders frequently pointed to changes in vehicle technology that were putting a dent in the collision repair market. Daytime running lights, the third brake light and anti-lock braking systems (if drivers used them properly), they'd say, were among the key factors pulling accident frequency down. 

The industry then got a sort of reprieve for a number of years in terms of crash-prevention efforts. Automakers turned their focus largely to vehicle safety and occupant protection, including the explosive growth - no pun intended - of air bag systems. The Internet boom also had the OEMs and electronics firms focused on passenger information and entertainment systems.

The bad news for the industry is that direction is about to change - and change rather dramatically. Federal auto safety regulators - seeking to reverse a rise in highway deaths - are shifting their focus from mandates that help occupants survive crashes to technology that will help drivers avoid accidents altogether.

Dr. Jeffrey Runge, administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, said in a speech before the Society of Automotive Engineers that bolstering vehicle "crashworthiness" represents the past, and that "crash avoidance" is the future.

"I'd like to begin to focus on the event before the crash," Runge said. "We may have plateaued out in terms of crashworthiness."

The effect of that change was perhaps no where more apparent than at the last "Convergence," a 30-year-old event in Detroit that brings together 10,000 automotive and electronics industry insiders. At the event in recent years, telematics technology was all the rage, with systems promising that without leaving their vehicle, drivers would soon be able to do just about everything electronic they could from home or office.

This past year, it was clear that for a number of reasons, automakers and their suppliers are less interested in letting motorists send and receive e-mail - and far more interested in new systems to keep vehicles from running into one another. That's not good news for those who make a living in the collision repair industry.

"The ultimate goal here seems to be to make cars that refuse to crash," one automotive technology developer quipped.