Uber to trial self-driving cars from today

Uber riders will have the chance to ride in self-driving cars for the first time today.

Passengers in the US city of Pittsburgh will have the opportunity to glimpse the future by summoning a car capable of handling most of the tasks of driving on its own.

As of this morning, a fleet of self-driving Ford Fusions will pick up Uber riders who opted to participate in a test programme.

While the vehicles are loaded with features that allow them to navigate on their own, an Uber engineer will sit in the driver's seat to seize control if things go awry.

Uber's test program is the latest move in an increasingly heated race between tech companies in Silicon Valley and traditional car manufacturers to perfect fully driverless cars.

Competitors such as Volvo and Google have invested hundreds of millions of dollars and logged millions of miles test driving autonomous vehicles, but Uber is the first company in the US to make self-driving cars available to the general public.

Raffi Krikorian, Director of Uber Advanced Technologies Center (ATC) in Pittsburgh, the company's main facility for testing self-driving vehicles, said: "That pilot really pushes the ball forward for us.

"We think it can help with congestion, we think it can make transportation cheaper and more accessible for the vast majority of people."

Removing the cost of the driver goes towards making rides more affordable for passengers. But that prospect didn't sit well with some Uber customers.

However, experts predict that it will be years, if not decades, before the public is being driven around in fleets of fully driverless vehicles under any condition.