Milton Keynes's "driverless cars"

Actually, they're not really cars at all; at least, not in the way most people think of cars. Instead, they're two-seat "driverless" electrically propelled pods that will trundle along the pavements and walkways in Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire at a sedate 12mph.

Twenty units will be operating by 2015. That's the plan, anyway. By 2017, that number is set to rise to around one hundred. The first vehicles will be driver-operated; a move that's intended to give pedestrians, motorists, cyclists and bikers alike the opportunity to get used to them before the computers take over and the system goes either semi- or fully-autonomous.

If the £65million experiment is successful, the scheme will be rolled out in other UK towns and cities.

Travellers will book their rides via their mobile phones which will direct them to the nearest available module. It all sounds pretty up-to-the-minute, perhaps, but some of us have been waiting since the 1960s, and earlier, for the science fact to catch up with what was once the science fiction.

Initially, the start point and end point of your journey will be limited. You'll be free to connect the mile-apart dots between the station and the city centre, or vice versa. But there's no doubt that the network will expand and that soon we'll be awash with these pint-sized buggies that, if you squint, look vaguely like giant full-faced crash helmets.

And how much will the journey's cost? Just £2, we're told.

The queue forms somewhere else...

— Del Monte

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