Standard fitment

Most manufacturers offer AEB as part of an option pack combined with other safety technology such as lane keeping assist and blind spot monitoring.

Prices range from around £700 to more than £2,000.

“It’s hard to say whether AEB will become standard,” commented Vince Kinner, head of fleet services at Volkswagen.

“ABS took five years to become established so it’s too early to call. It depends how the market reacts and whether we get much call for it.

"We’re not getting asked for it – maybe because the awareness isn’t there about it being an option.”

BMW agrees that there isn’t currently sufficient demand to warrant it becoming a standard fitting yet.

However, Volvo’s City Safety is standard on a number of models and it expects AEB to play a major role in smaller models given its 2020 Vision -no one will be killed or seriously injured in a new Volvo car.

Meanwhile, Honda - one of the first manufacturers to offer AEB - aims to introduce advanced safety technology into smaller, more affordable family cars.

“It usually takes seven to 10 years to get a large population of the fleet to change so by the end of this decade we expect a high proportion of vehicles will have some degree of AEB,” said Matthew Avery, crash research manager at Thatcham.

Driver education

If fleet managers introduce AEB to their fleets an element of driver education will be needed so drivers understand how the technology works and its limitations.

And Peter Thomas, Professor of Road and Vehicle Safety at the Transport Safety Research Centre, Loughborough University, warned against the potential for complacency.

He said: “This is not a silver bullet – it won’t prevent every collision. It would be foolish for drivers to think the system will take them out of trouble so they can drive faster.”

Manufacturers say they have deliberately made the braking harsh so that drivers don’t become too complacent.