According to Bosch, 25 percent of all accidents are caused by skidding and that 60 percent of all fatal injuries occur because of side-impact crashes caused mainly by skidding. In an attempt to prevent situations like this, Bosch has improved its ESP systems, creating two new packages in the process. The market has been slow to pick up the life-saving technology but the company hopes this will change with the recent move by the Big Three automakers to equip the majority of their SUVs with ESP as standard by the end of the year.

Bosch’s new systems are ESP Plus and ESP Premium, the latter of which will be fitted to luxury vehicles that usually feature a host of different security acronyms. The dominant feature of ESP Premium is the new pump that features six pistons instead of the usual two. A vehicle fitted with Premium version can accelerate 50 percent faster from a rolling start of 40km/h than a car with a conventional system while driving on ice. We hope the technology will filter down to most cars quickly.