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The Prince Michael International Road Safety Awards recognise outstanding innovation or achievement and each year the judges make one Technology Award for road-based or vehicle-based innovation that is considered to have significant merit.

This year Jaguar has been recognised for its outstanding safety innovation – the pedestrian deployable bonnet – in the new XK sports car.

Jonathan Mabey and Bill McLundie, on behalf of the Jaguar XK pedestrian safety team, received the award at the Savoy Hotel from His Royal Highness Prince Michael of Kent on 6 December.

"We are extremely proud to receive this award on behalf of the hardworking engineering team which was involved in the Jaguar Pyrotechnic Pedestrian Deployable Bonnet and the new XK," said Mabey after receiving the award.

Jaguar is one of the first manufacturers to meet Phase One of new European safety legislation using an active deployable bonnet system. The new standards are designed to help mitigate the severity of injuries to pedestrians in the event of a collision with a car. Legislation in the European market requires manufacturers to commit to a two-phase introduction of a range of active and passive safety improvements on all new cars to improve the protection of pedestrians in case of accident.

In the unfortunate event of a pedestrian impact, the deployable bonnet on the new XK automatically 'pops' up a few inches to increase space between the engine and the bonnet. This helps to isolate the pedestrian from hard points in the engine compartment and reacts in less than a tenth of the time it takes to blink an eye. An advanced sensing system is mounted in the front bumper to help discriminate between a pedestrian collision and any other possible front-end collisions.

The all-new aluminium Jaguar XK will be launched early in 2006 and will allow Jaguar to emerge as a world leader in Lightweight Vehicle Technology while retaining its reputation for beautifully designed and crafted cars.