In the coming years systems will become available that will be able to drive in automated mode for certain periods of time but will only be able to handle selected situations. This is referred to as conditional automation (level 3), whereby the driver no longer has to monitor the vehicle continuously but does have to take control on request when the limits of the automation driving system are reached. What we can say today is that vehicles with different levels of automation will be sharing the roads with manually driven vehicles in the foreseeable future. It is still unclear whether automated vehicles sharing the road with manually driven vehicles will lead to additional road safety risks (mixed traffic). With the presumption that vehicles will still be involved in accidents while they are driving in automated mode, following question arises: how will these accidents look like in the future? The German Insurers Accident Research therefore analyzed the impact of automated driving on motorway accidents. For this study, the UDV used its own accident database (referred to as the UDB) which contains a representative cross-section of all third-party vehicle claim files of the insurers involving personal injury and at least € 15,000 total claim value. The analyzed pool consists of accidents which occurred between 2007 and 2013. In a first step, relevant accident scenarios were determined based on all motorway accidents involving cars in the data pool. In a second step, generic automated driving functions and their characteristics were defined. Thereby, starting with driver assistance and comfort systems (DACS), automation Level 3 and 4 were defined and analyzed. By means of a case-by-case analysis the theoretical benefit potential of these systems was evaluated. Results of the analyses are: It can be expected for the future that cars driving in automated mode will still be involved in accidents. An active Level 3 function as described above could prevent up to 6% more motorway accidents than modern cars equipped with DACS. But negative effects that haven’t been quantified up to know may decrease this potential significantly. With these systems it can anticipated that the frequency of rear-end accidents will decrease. But accidents caused by lane change will remain a big challenge for the automated driving systems. With a Level 4 system which drives in automated mode a total of 21% of all motorway accidents were considered as avoidable. The approach used in the study is based on limited knowledge on automated driving available today. It can be stated that the driver is the most critical part up to Level 4 automated driving. Starting with Level 4 this uncertainty will be nearly eliminated. A significant change in the accident situation can be expected only from systems with a very high level of automation (Level 4+) which exclude the driver from the driving task completely. But even with a Level 4 system, accidents will still happen in the future, e.g. due to mixed traffic.