The 10 safest cars on sale in 2017: from hatchbacks to SUVs these are the cars to keep your family safe

Autonomous Emergency Braking (AEB): These systems operate at city and motorway speeds and can detect pedestrians.

Lane Keep Assist: The top ten safest cars of the year all have standard-fit Lane Keep Assist systems.

These systems actively steer away from road edges and lane markings to prevent dangerous ‘run-off road’ and head-on accidents.

"With six per cent of A-Road crashes involving head-on collisions, this should be the next life-saving technology fitted by carmakers who want to signal their intent to prioritise driver safety.

Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC): As with AEB, ACC can use cameras, radar or lidar to determine the gap to the vehicle in front.

Unlike normal cruise control, adaptive systems use the radar (or sometimes camera) to maintain a safe following distance, regardless of the speed set.

Drivers that use ACC have been shown to have fewer collisions since it helps to condition the driver to maintain a safe distance to the car in front.

Blind Spot Indication System (BLIS): Stops drivers moving into the path of an overtaking vehicle that is hidden in the blind spot.

It commonly uses radar, to sense the presence of another vehicle including motorcycles and will give a visual or audible warning - usually a light in the wing mirror or door pillar - to alert the driver.

Some intervene by braking or steering back into lane. While only three per cent of motorway accidents involve one car pulling in front of another, at the high speeds of those roads the consequences can be disastrous.

Cyclist AEB: Vulnerable road users, including cyclists and pedestrians, account for 30 per cent of all fatalities or serious injuries across the EU each year.

The smaller size and more erratic movement of cyclists compared with cars makes them harder for standard AEB systems to track.

As with pedestrian AEB, cyclist detection systems use better sensors and algorithms to detect the presence of cyclists and respond to their movements.

The performance of AEB systems in detecting cyclists is coming into Euro NCAP test protocols from 2018.

Driver Monitoring: Some systems can monitor and in turn warn the driver if they are distracted or have been inattentive for a prolonged period – and some which will pull the car over to the side of the road if the driver has not responded.

Rear Cross Traffic Alert: Monitors an approaching vehicle from the side and warns the driver or applies the brakes to prevent them from reversing from a parking space into the path of another vehicle.

92 injuries occurred in 2016 as a direct result of reversing cars.