The world's first rating system for the safety of autonomous cars is being developed by accident experts in Britain. Crash testers at Thatcham Research outside Reading have worked with global systems engineers, car makers and the Law Commission to draw up the safety ratings which could be applied to models in the same way as the familiar Euro NCap stars. The development comes as Mercedes-Benz in Germany announced that it will accept legal responsibility for collisions that occur in its cars fitted with an'L3' Automated Lane Keeping System, when directly caused by a fault with its technology but not when the driver has "failed to comply with their duty of care". With this news representing another significant milestone on the road towards Automated Driving, Matthew Avery, chief research strategy officer, Thatcham Research, commented on the issue of legal liability for the first iterations of the technology. The UK Government is considering legislation to permit fully autonomous driving on roads and trials have been held in several places.

Sergey Brin knows a little about ground-breaking technology. But when the Google co-founder said in 2012 that we could'count on one hand' the number of years it'd take for'most of us to have access to autonomous cars', it still sounded a bold prediction. So more than eight years on, where do we find ourselves? Autonomous or'self-drive' cars are already on the road in the US, while on this side of the pond, the Government is consulting on allowing self-drive vehicles to travel on public motorways at up to 70mph from as early as spring next year. However, the Association of British Insurers (ABI) and Thatcham Research, an independent motoring body funded by the insurance industry, has pushed back warning that if systems were defined legally as'automated' (meaning drivers can take their hands off the steering wheel), it would pose a major risk to safety on the roads.

Nearly three-quarters of Americans are afraid to ride in self-driving cars, according to the latest survey by the American Automobile Association. There is bad news ahead for the many automobile and technology companies currently developing, and road-testing, self-driving cars: many people are too frightened to ride in driverless vehicles. The American Automobile Association (AAA) May consumer trust survey on autonomous vehicles (AVs) found that 73% of U.S. citizens now fear traveling in an AV, compared with 63% just six months before. In addition, the survey found that two-thirds of millennials--a supposedly tech-loving generation--are also too fearful to ride in self-driving cars. The AAA even has unwelcome news from pedestrians and cyclists, with nearly two-thirds saying they don't trust AVs enough to use roads and sidewalks alongside them.

You can't buy an autonomous car today. You won't be able to buy one tomorrow, or next month, or next year. Yes, self-driving tech is in development (and in the news), but nobody's close to delivering a product that can take humans anywhere they want to go. That may come as a surprise if you've browsed websites or glossy marketing materials filled with claims of cars driving themselves, relieving the driver of the mundane tasks of steering and braking. Or if you've heard Tesla CEO Elon Musk promise that with Version 9 of Tesla's software, "We will begin to enable full self-driving features."

The marketing of driving assistance features such as Autopilot, ProPilot and others as "autonomous" is setting unrealistic expectations and causing dangerous driving, according to insurers and vehicle safety researchers. In a report, Thatcham Research and the Association of British Insurers (ABI) say that drivers are being lulled into a false sense of security by the marketing of new driver assistance features making their way into cars and costing upwards of £20,000. Features such as Tesla's Enhanced Autopilot and Nissan's ProPilot, as well as terms such as "full self-driving capability" and being "capable of driving autonomously" are giving the false impression of a level of autonomy not yet available. As such, drivers are not treating these features with the level of scrutiny and attention required resulting in crashes and dangerous driving. "We are starting to see real-life examples of the hazardous situations that occur when motorists expect the car to drive and function on its own," said Matthew Avery, the head of research at Thatcham Research. "Specifically, where the technology is taking ownership of more and more of the driving task, but the motorist may not be sufficiently aware that they are still required to take back control in problematic circumstances."