The call was made at the launch event of the new Stop the Crash Partnership in Brazil, which revealed that 34,000 Brazilian lives could be saved and 350,000 serious injuries prevented by 2030, if UN vehicle safety regulations including ESC were adopted in national legislation.

In the United States, where ESC became mandatory from 2012, it’s estimated that already more than 6,000 lives have been saved by this crash avoidance technology.

In addition to the USA, ESC is now mandatory in Australia, Canada, the European Union, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, Russia, South Korea, Turkey and will soon also be in Argentina.

In their recent Global Status Report on Road Safety the World Health Organization (WHO) expressed their concern that global car manufacturers who are required to fit ESC in high-income countries “can sell the same model to markets without this life saving technology if the country does not apply the ESC regulation”.

David Ward, secretary general of Global NCAP and chairman of the Stop the Crash Partnership, said: “ESC is a vital life-saving technology which can prevent crashes altogether rather than just protecting people when one occurs.

“Our latest research shows that hundreds of thousands of deaths and serious injuries could be prevented in Brazil if ESC and a package of other UN regulations were introduced. This is why Global NCAP recommends that the Brazilian government build on their 2014 decision to mandate ABS and do the same now for ESC.”

The call has been backed by the UK’s Thatcham, part of the Stop the Crash Partnership.

“In Europe, ESC has been mandatory since 2012 and we’ve seen first-hand how effective it can be in preventing the driver from losing control in a skid,” said Andrew Miller, chief technical officer at Thatcham Research and President of Euro NCAP.