The world’s first code of practice for driverless cars was announced for the UK roads, developed by the Department for Transport in consultation with the UK Autodrive Consortium, Venturer and GATEway consortia.

The code clears driveless vehicles to be tested in Greenwich (SE London), Bristol, Coventry and Milton Keynes.

The document also fosters research into smart driveless transport systems, from buses to LUTZ Pathfinder vehicles, which travel along pavements.

The Autodrive Consortium, which received £10 million from the UK Government to work on the introduction of driveless cars, said it aims to make the UK a global hub for the technology.

The code of practice states that at least 30 seconds of data must always be available and that pods like LUTZ need to have someone who can remotely control them at all times.

It said that humans should always be in the car and that in case of incident, the driver (or remote controller) will be held responsible.

Tim Armitage, project leader at the Autodrive Consortium, told The Telegraph: "We’re coordinating the trials technically and working with government to ensure that the legislation keeps pace with what the technologies need to do in order to facilitate this brave new world.

"One of the things we will be doing is undertaking some acceptance surveys globally and in the UK to gauge public opinion around driverless technologies, and we’ll monitor how that changes over the three years of our project."

Nick Cook, CIO at Intercede, told CBR: "Smart vehicles have captured everyone’s attention, from manufacturers to consumers, but this unfortunately also means they have captured the imagination of hackers and criminals too.

"In an increasingly connected world, it is vital that anything and everyone connected to the internet is assigned a trusted identity. With identity comes the foundation for communication security.

"A holistic approach to security in smart vehicle technology is vital to ensure all bases from safety, to GPS navigation to infotainment are covered."

UK trials will continue in Greenwich, and pods will be deployed across other cities until late 2017.