The cost of car insurance is expected to plunge by nearly two-thirds when motorists make the switch to fully driverless cars in the future, new research has found.

According to a report by research company Autonomous Research, autonomous cars will slash UK insurance premiums by 63 per cent by 2060, causing the motor insurance industry to shrink by over 80 per cent.

Today, motor insurance policies make up for 42 per cent of the global insurance market, as human error remains the biggest cause of accidents. One-third of all claims are generated from rear-end shunts, with two-thirds occurring at speeds below 30mph. Parking and reversing scrapes cause nearly a quarter of all claims. The cost of the average motor insurance policy in the UK last year was £357.

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According to the report, with fully autonomous cars on the road, the percentage of motorists making a claim will plummet from 9% to around 2.4% by 2060. And this fall in numbers is already on the way. Cars with semi-autonomous features like adaptive cruise control and autonomous emergency braking (AEB) have been found to cut accident rates for motorists.