Looking at the figures for mini and small cars by country, in France 89% are sold without ESC, in the UK the figure is 77% and Italy is at 68%. Germany has the best ESC installation rates but still under half (48%) of its cars have ESC fitted as standard.

At the larger, luxury end of the market, cars have 100% ESC installation rates.

At the eSafety Challenge event, Jean Todt, eSafety Aware president, said: 'Huge work has gone into developing electronic safety systems that can have a major impact improving road safety. It's particularly worrying that so many smaller cars, which are often driven by families or young people, are being sold without crucial life-saving technologies such as ESC. We now must get these technologies into the market – people's lives depend upon it.'

Recent studies have shown that as much as €330 million could be saved by preventing small rear impact accidents and that more than three out of four accidents with severe injuries could be avoided with the 100% introduction of Warning and Emergency Braking Systems.