The comments from the experts at the motor insurers’ automotive research facility come in the wake of a 130-vehicle pile-up on the Isle of Sheppey last week, which took place in thick fog and miraculously saw nobody killed.

Thatcham has been researching and testing Autonomous Emergency Braking (AEB) systems on behalf of insurers for the last three years and has already undertaken an in-depth study of crashes and their causation factors.

International safety body Euro NCAP is to incorporate the test as part of its overall vehicle safety standard in 2014, whilst UK insurers are already offering favourable insurance groupings on vehicles fitted with AEB as standard.

Peter Shaw, chief executive of Thatcham Research, said: ‘The evidence from our testing is undeniable and combined with a growing body of real-world research and evidence we firmly believe that AEB and other ADAS (Advanced Driver Assist Systems) have a critical role to play in avoiding both common low-speed shunts that can cause injuries such as whiplash, and mitigating some of the horrendous injuries and fatalities that we see as result of higher-speed pile-ups.’

‘Currently, some 20% of new cars in the UK have an AEB system available and if that rate of development continues we would hope that, by 2030, multiple-vehicle collisions could be history.’