More autonomous driving technologies are on the way, but fully autonomous vehicles at the mass market level aren’t projected for the foreseeable future, experts said Tuesday at the Society of Automotive Engineers 2013 World Congress.”2025 is the time-frame where we see cars driving themselves,” said Christian Schumacher, head of Continental Automotive’s Advanced Driver Assistance Systems for the NAFTA region, echoing the rough timeline for fully autonomous vehicles projected by most in the industry.

But semi-autonomous vehicles, with technologies such as pedestrian recognition and traffic jam assist — where radar and camera technology help a vehicle keep pace with other vehicles and provide automated steering control to maintain lane presence — may be just a handful of years away.

And similar technologies may not be far behind.

Nissan Motor Co., which is testing a fully autonomous prototype Leaf electric vehicle, on Tuesday showed a video of a technology that will automatically turn a car’s steering wheel to avoid a potential accident.

The technology would first attempt to alert the driver through audio and visual cues before turning the wheel and applying brakes, if there is vacant space in a nearby lane.

The pressing concern with fully autonomous vehicles is what happens if the technology fails. Currently, few traffic accidents are caused solely by vehicle malfunction; in fact, most accidents are a result of human distraction, error or intoxication.

But self-driving cars have the potential for added risk.

“If one accident happens as a result of automation,” Schumacher said during a panel discussion Tuesday at Cobo Center, “then we’re having a totally new discussion.”

The autonomous car debate continues to be meshed with discussion about distracted driving as cars become more connected with smartphones. Experts are torn as to whether the issues are one and the same.

“Driver distraction and safety technology are really separate ships passing in the night,” said Peter Sweatman, director of the University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute.

But other experts, like Schumacher, believe the two are intertwined, because driver distractions — talking on the phone, text messaging and emailing — are difficult to curb, but can be aided with autonomous vehicle features.

Distracted driving is combatted at the state level by new laws, including cell phone restrictions here in Michigan, but autonomous vehicle regulations are still in the infancy stage.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said in October that it is preparing regulations setting performance standards for autonomous cars — the next “evolutionary step” for the nation’s fleet of vehicles.

NHTSA Administrator David Strickland said the agency is working on a two- to three-year research project before it begins writing rules to oversee driverless cars in the next few years. He hopes the technology could one day save “thousands of lives.”