Driverless cars to dent insurance industry, warns Volvo chief

It is predicted that driverless cars will prevent the vast majority of crashes and dramatically reduce the cost of insuring a car, according to industry experts. Volvo's chief executive will tell a seminar on driverless cars on Tuesday that autonomous vehicles are the "single most important advance in automotive safety" in years. The Swedish carmaker's boss, Håkan Samuelsson, will cite US government research predicting that driverless cars will lead to an 80% fall in the number of car crashes by 2035. Even when an accident cannot be avoided, the impact speed will also drop due to automatic crash avoidance systems, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The result will be a huge decrease in the cost of car insurance premiums, according to separate research by insurer Swiss Re and the technology group Here. Premiums in the 14 largest car markets in the world are set to drop by $20bn (£13.5bn) by 2020 alone, according to their projections.