That was the message from Edmund King, AA president, speaking at a briefing in the House of Commons on Tuesday 25th March.

Edmund King told a parliamentary meeting, organised by the Thatcham Research campaign “Stop the Crash”: ‘We need to encourage manufacturers to make AEB available further down their model ranges and we need to encourage car buyers, including fleet buyers, to specify AEB when choosing new cars. As the Government has a good record of giving incentives to encourage the uptake of greener cars, we would like to see such incentives expanded to safer cars.’

The AA added that its own AA-Populus motoring panel survey of 24,351 drivers clearly shows that the uptake of AEB would double if the Government was to provide a £500 cash incentive to those buying a car with AEB.

According to figures, AEB systems, such as Volvo's City Safety, Ford's Active City Stop and Volkswagen's City Emergency Braking, have the potential to save more than 1200 lives and 136,000 casualties over 10 years, whilst is estimated that fitting AEB would bring insurance premiums down by 10% on the cars fitted with AEB.

AEB is already standard fit on some models but more widely available as an optional extra, often bundled with other Advanced Driver Assistance Systems. On average AEB is currently estimated to cost around £1000 as an option on new cars.

This year's Fleet World Fleet Show will offer fleet managers the opportunity to try out the very latest AEB systems at the Silverstone Grand Prix circuit on 9th April in partnership with the insurance industry-backed Thatcham Research Centre, alongside Bosch and RoadSafe. 

For more details of the Fleet World Fleet Show 2014 please phone 01727 739160, visit www.thefleetshow.co.uk or click here to register: www.thefleetshow.co.uk/visiting