For example, transportation technologies are generally in this category. This might change soon with the advent of self-driving cars, but it's still hard to reconcile any "law of accelerating returns" with four decades of no meaningful progress.

Fatal car accidents per million miles driven, and per capita, are down precipitously. Although consumer automotive technology is not becoming faster and faster, using it is becoming safer and safer. In human terms — in terms of its ability to implement our values, which certainly include using it without dying or killing — the technology is advancing steadily.

(Of course, this construes "consumer automotive technology" broadly — including airbags, highway design, and Breathalyzers! — not just things like engine design.)