How much safer are they? I can totally believe that the crash safety of cars improved hugely in the 90s - that's basically when large crumple zones, computer modelling of crash performance, airbags, seatbelt pretensioners etc were all developed.
But 20 years ago was 2005. What's changed on a modern car since 2005? There's obviously a lot more safety features (and these have increasingly been part of the crashworthiness rating cars are given). But if you crash into a wall at 40mph, how much stronger are they?
A lot. Probably the biggest single change was the introduction of the small overlap crash test by the IIHS. It turns out that the standard frontal crash tests are quite unrealistic; in most frontal accidents, the driver swerves to avoid something but clips the corner, rather than just slamming into something head-on. Cars designed to perform well in the standard frontal crash test often performed miserably in the small overlap test.
Compare the same model before and after the small overlap test:
The safest cars basically saturated the safety tests. To the point where car companies are making up their own tests, simulating much more dangerous collisions.
But 20 years ago was 2005. What's changed on a modern car since 2005? There's obviously a lot more safety features (and these have increasingly been part of the crashworthiness rating cars are given). But if you crash into a wall at 40mph, how much stronger are they?