Driverless vehicle technology being developed through a collaboration between Oxford University and Nissan is to be tested on UK public roads as part of new £28b road strategy plans.

The driverless car has already been tested on private roads, but approval of the test by the Department of Transport has given the vehicles the green light to hit the public highways. A back-up driver will be required to sit in the vehicle for safety reasons at this stage during tests.

Google has already successfully carried out a 100,000 mile driverless test on adapted Toyota Prius models on roads around San Francisco. The developers say this kind of driverless technology is eventually likely to greatly reduce the number of road accidents.