Russian Car

The Russian car with no driver at the wheel

When Russian tech giant Yandex invited me to go for a ride on the actual streets of Las Vegas in its model - a reworked Toyota Prius loaded with sensors and a big computer in the boot - I was expecting to be underwhelmed.

I've seen mini-delivery trucks pootle around at walking speeds on test tracks and I've been in a driverless car with a human very much at the wheel, fingers nervously poised millimetres from the steering wheel "just in case".

And rightly so - when autonomous car tech goes wrong, as Tesla and Uber can both testify, the results can be catastrophic.