Air bags, crumple zones, anti-lock brakes, along with better DUI education/enforcement, all combined to drive deaths down significantly. By 2021, distracted driving thanks to the smart phone and car entertainment systems (I'll toss high driving in here as well) erased twenty-five years of gains. Now, the next generation of mandated "safety" devices - lane detection, emergency braking notices, automatic braking (which is causing many accidents themselves) - are just to coddle texting/browsing drivers.