As public transport prices soar, it is becoming more tempting to ignore green guilt and congestion charges and retrieve the car. But driving can be so inconvenient – you can’t do your make-up, finish off that book, or watch the kids properly if you’re concentrating on the road, can you?

General Motors has the answer: the car that drives itself. GM is working on driverless vehicles that could be ready within a decade. “This is not science fiction,” says Larry Burns, vice-president for research and development. A key benefit, says an engineer, would be safer roads, as 95 per cent of accidents are caused by human error. Much of the necessary technology, such as satellite-based digital mapping, already exists.

Obstacles are more likely to be human than technical: for example, government regulation and motorists’ enthusiasm for the feeling of control that driving gives them.

Of course, “progress” has its drawbacks. Cabbies will find themselves jobless, as will the drivers of heavy goods vehicles in France, whom, as we reported yesterday, have been caught casually driving with their feet on the dashboard and their eyes on the in-cab TV. Unlikely objectors to relinquishing that feeling of control, then.

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