Driverless cars: Not if, but when

They will save millions of lives and are a matter of when, not if, according to the man behind the driverless car brain that could lead the automotive market as soon as 2030.

Dave Ferguson, 35, supervises the development of the computer brain controlling Google's driverless car — currently being made by a team of engineers.

The New Zealander also has the Mars Rover on his impressive resume and says driverless cars are the only fix to a tragedy we ignore every day.

"Every year we lose 1.2 million people worldwide to vehicle accidents."

"If this was a disease or this was terrorism or something we would be up in arms trying to fix this"

"Instead it's something we do badly every day."

Ferguson told Sunday Night driverless vehicles are not a question of if, but when.

"There is no doubt that we will have self driving cars out on the roads. The question is just when. I think it will be sooner than people realise and I think when we look back we're going to wonder how we felt this was never going to happen

He told Alex Cullen they could be on the market as soon as 2030 and the target consumers will include seniors, giving them independence when they lose their ability to drive safely.

"Our overall population is aging, and people between the ages of 65 and up are one of the largest growing parts of our population because of the baby boomer generation right and these are folks that really value their independence right."

They are not without opposition.

Sarah Burgess is a Brisbane mum who races trucks on the professional circuit in the US. For Sarah, control of her vehicle completes the ultimate driving experience and told those at Google who want to take that control away from her to ‘get a life’.

Newspaper cartoonist and former Top Gear Australia host Warren Brown shares the sentiment and refuses to listen to the ‘shovel bearded hipsters with their man buns’ who believe a machine is a better driver than the average human.

But the arguments for are just as good as those against.

First of all, the car's roof sensor has a 360-degree view the length of almost two football fields.

"We need to make sure that our code and our entire system is rock solid right, again we spend a lot of time making sure that we don't have any bugs in the system and that it's thoroughly tested so that it won't do anything silly when it's out there on the roads."

"We have to report all of the accidents we've been in and, in the six years this project has been on, we've had about a dozen and not one of them was caused by the vehicle."

Google argues the simplicity of driverless cars and pedestrian-sensing technology will make life safer for everyone.

"The latest vehicles have more and more gadgets and gizmos and buttons and are more confusing," Ferguson said.

"When you add up those features, this whole project is focused on safety. There's one last feature … a lot of focus has gone into pedestrian protection, so we also look at protecting the occupants but pedestrian protection."

Not only that, but the front end of the vehicle is actually made of a special type of foam, protecting both the occupant and the pedestrian.

According to experts many of us will live to see driverless cars take over the road, but that will mean massive changes to current road laws.

Will drink 'driving' be an offence? Who is responsible when there's a computer glitch and something goes wrong?

Dave Ferguson says this is something for lawmakers to seriously consider in the coming years.

"I think liability is something that again it's early days and it's something that will have to get worked out."

He says the company behind the vehicle will certainly be more accountable.

"If both of the driverless cars are operated by the same company then probably that company will be accountable."

"If you're in a driverless car and your only interaction with a system is that you sat down and you sort of pushed a button to go to a destination, then it seems very unlikely that you would be liable."

While Google can't make the law around drink driverless-driving, Ferguson says their car has the ability to drastically reduce drink driving deaths.

"I think one of the areas where this will be valuable frankly is reducing drunk driving accidents"

"The change it's going to elicit in our societies and how we live is going to be pretty, pretty fantastic"