In the US, the 10 companies – Audi, BMW, Ford, General Motors, Mazda, Mercedes Benz, Tesla, Toyota, Volkswagen and Volvo – will work with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) in the coming months on implementing the move, including the timeline for making AEB a standard feature.

In response, Thatcham said that equipping all new cars in the UK with AEB would result in a reduction of 17,000 deaths and serious injuries on the UK’s roads in the next decade. It added that currently nearly 30% of new cars in the UK have an AEB system available, but not, in most cases, standard.

Peter Shaw, chief executive of Thatcham Research, said: “As a start-point, the UK alone would see an enormous drop in the number of fatal and serious injury crashes if the high-volume sellers – Ford and Vauxhall – introduced standard-fit AEB.”

A recent report from Euro NCAP and ANCAP, the independent safety bodies for Europe and Australasia, said that low speed AEB technology leads to a 38% reduction in real-world rear-end crashes.