At RM 43,190, the Perodua Axia Advance is the cheapest car to come equipped with Autonomous Emergency Braking (AEB).

Most of us have been there, maybe something caught our attention away from the road momentarily, or we mispressed the accelerator pedal, or maybe we were too busy on *coughs* Facebook. A split second later and bam!

But one feature that won’t be distracted or too busy is AEB. It is a system that detects an impending collision ahead and warns the driver. If the driver does not respond, it applies maximum braking to stop or at least, mitigate the crash.

AEB is under the umbrella term Advanced Driver Assistance System (ADAS) and different manufacturers name it differently. In the case of Perodua, they call it Advanced Safety Assist (ASA) and the Axia is fitted with the newer ASA 2.0.

Basic AEB systems work at low speeds, such as ASA in the Perodua Myvi that is up to 30 km/h. ASA 2.0 turns it up a notch to work at speeds up to 100 km/h.

The ability to detect objects varies between manufacturers as some systems use cameras or a millimetre wave radar, or both. ASA is camera based and uses a pair of cameras to judge distance, similar to our human eyes.

Without radar though, the operating range is naturally limited and poor visibility conditions such as fog, rain, or even glare from the sun can hinder its performance.

For budget cars such as the Axia, it works well enough and is at the moment, the cheapest car on sale to have this feature.