Every Renault, including the newest addition to the Kangoo Van range, has the potentially life-saving anti-lock brake system (ABS) fitted as standard.

Yet in an age where corporate responsibility is coming under ever-increasing scrutiny and the Government's ‘Duty of Care' legislation states that a vehicle can be classified as a place of work, it may come as a surprise to many to see how conspicuous in its absence ABS is in other vans sold in the UK each year.

While employers and managers using Renault vans in their businesses can sleep soundly at night, safe in the knowledge that the risks to their drivers and other road users are reduced in the event of an emergency braking situation thanks to ABS, it's alarming to see how many brands fail to offer it, let alone fit it as standard.

After all, it's been around on cars for nearly 40 years and surely represents a small cost in relation to the number of lives it could potentially save each year with LCV drivers clocking up around 40 billion miles** each year in the UK.

The case for the prosecution makes for compelling reading, with several other manufacturers appearing just as keen to cut corners as they are to profit from the lack of standard fit ABS by only offering it as a costly option in many cases.

First up is Ford. As the market leader, you would be forgiven for thinking that all of their vans would have ABS as standard. But you would be wrong. Not only is ABS not available on the Ford Ranger but more worryingly it's also a £300 option on the cheapest version of Transit Connect.

This alarming pattern is mirrored with PSA Group. Citroën, which, given its Euro NCAP crash test results for its cars, might lead you to believe it would have such an obvious safety device fitted as standard, would leave you with your faith in tatters.

ABS is standard only on a few of its products, namely the C2, Dispatch Combi and the top-of-the-range Enterprise versions of Berlingo and Dispatch. Otherwise you'll be forking out up to £500 each time for every other van model they make.

Their sister company do even worse by not fitting ABS to any Partner, Boxer, or Expert panel van as standard. If you wish to add it, again it could cost you up to £500.

Human error is the cause of over 80% of all fatal and injury road crashes each year so to help in reducing this, ABS is fitted as standard to all Renault vans in the UK, while EBD (electronic brake distribution) is also fitted to all Clio Van, Trafic and Master models to offer even greater protection.

The technology is just the start of it. Renault believes that the best accidents to have are those that never happen, so in addition to its pioneering safety R&D efforts, it also runs the international ‘Safety For All' campaign each year.

This campaign, which helped educate 1.2 million schoolchildren between the ages of seven and eleven about the importance of road safety in the 2004-5 school year has just been extended to 19 countries.