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The US Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx said this week President Obama's government plans to invest nearly $4billion (£2.8bn) over the next 10 years helping oil the wheels of the driverless car industry.

He said driverless cars could save 25,000 lives a year in the US by eliminating human error.

California-based Google have stolen a march on the major carmakers with their driverless car prototype. One of them was flagged down by a highway patrol in November for driving TOO SLOW.

But Toyota are breathing down their necks and have set up their own research base in California while others, like Mercedes, are trying to catch up.

Apple are also believed to be exploring "autonomous car" technology while General Motors have signed a deal with Lyft to try and create a fleet of driverless cars which would could pick you up and ferry you about.

But is the world ready for driverless cars?

A survey in 2013 found that only 12% of people in the UK wanted a driverless car.

Those figures might change if people cottoned on to the potential perks.

Fed up of being the designated driver? Let the car take the strain.

Jan Dawson, chief analyst with Jackdaw Research, told the Daily Star Online said: "Instead of having a designated human driver, your car would be the driver. Of course, you'd still have to be conscious enough to remember how to summon your car."

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And there are other positives.

Mr Dawson said: "If we really do end up with truly driverless cars, many of us will have a lot more hours in the day because we won't spend them behind the wheel.

"Fewer people will need to own cars because self-driving cars could chauffeur around various different people during the course of a day, rather than having to belong to any one person.

"Parking could be further away from people's destinations, because cars could go and park themselves."

Future cars might even have beds in them so you could snooze on long-distance journeys while the car does all the driving for you.

Both Google and Toyota's technology involves a computerised driver system or a robot chauffeur but Mr Dawson said: "Google is certainly a pioneer in this market, but a lot of the car manufacturers are now doing a lot of their own research on this as well, because they don't want to lose out."

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But the technology is not quite there. In tests the computer had to hand over to a human in a number of circumstances when a collision was likely.

And there are other hurdles.

Last year the CEO of Volvo said his company could not conduct "credible" driverless car tests because there were so many different standards in all the different US states.

Last week at the Detroit Auto Show the US government signed a deal with 17 car makers aimed at bringing in voluntary agreements on driverless cars, instead of regulations, which would take years to get through Congress.

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But the big car makers – Ford, GM and Chrysler in the US plus the big German and Japanese firms – know that with driverless cars it will be the IT companies, not them, who are in the driver's seat.

Mr Dawson said: "The car companies are terrified of being relegated into a secondary position by the IT companies – whether Google, Apple, or someone else."

The world of sci-fi has conjured up many images of vehicles of the future.

But there could be downsides. Imagine a criminal gang who want a getaway driver who they can be sure won't grass on them. They'll hire a robot or driverless car.

Mr Dawson said: "This is a huge area of debate around driverless cars – in other words, all the legal and moral quandaries they present."

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"For example, if a driverless car suddenly finds itself in a situation where it has to choose between running over a granny or a child, how should it choose?"

"These cars will be designed to drive pretty much exclusively in safe, legal, ways by default, but there's definitely a question about how much individual control and personalisation people will want in these cars."

And what about truckers?

If driverless technology was transferred to larger vehicles thousands of lorry drivers could find themselves unemployed.

The US government hopes to use the first six months of 2016 to create a nationwide framework for the "safe development and operation" of autonomous vehicles.

Mercedes said it expects to have the technology ready by 2020, while Google is aiming for the same year.

So get ready...driverless cars are coming to a motorway near you sooner than you think.