Love or loathe the idea, self-driving cars are on the way. Volvo is at the forefront of pushing what’s legally and technically possible, so Matt Kimberley went to the firm’s Gothenburg home on the back of big news for the industry.

Volvo is about to hit the streets of its home city of Gothenburg with five semi-autonomous cars, designed to develop and refine the concept of a car that drives itself.

They’re just prototypes at this stage, using evolutions of existing technologies, including proximity sensors, cameras, lasers, comprehensive mapping data and internet-sourced traffic information, but they are among the first cars in Europe to drive stretches of public road independently of any driver input.

Intersections, roundabouts and even lane-changes are beyond the set-up’s limits at the moment, but plonk one of the modified S60 saloons on the highway, engage ‘autopilot’, and relax as it cruises, reduces speed for slower traffic ahead, keeps itself within its lane and even, should it need to do so, brings itself to a stop before crawling along in traffic.

By now you might already have asked yourself the inevitable insurance questions, and even Volvo admits it’s an obstacle that’s yet to be hurdled. The firm is absolutely confident that it will be, though. Without favourable treatment from the lawmakers, the project would never even have come this far.

The Swedish government’s interpretation of the rules set out in the Vienna Convention is pretty liberal. The text asserts that a human being must be responsible for the control of the car, but in Sweden, having a person overseeing a system of autonomous electronics while they work their witchcraft is apparently close enough.

As you can imagine, the Swedes are taking this seriously. The majority of the technologies under the upgraded S60s’ skins are already on the road. City Safety, Traffic Jam Assist and Adaptive Cruise Control, along with their ilk in rival brands’ cars, are very common these days. But to combine them all in such a way as to completely remove responsibility from the driver almost triples the sensor count from five to 13. And even that might not ultimately be enough, says Volvo.

At present, the Volvos involved in this trial can take charge of the car only on the motorway or dual carriageway, and only for as long as no extra inputs are needed, for example in overtakes or dealing with slip roads. You’d be forgiven for thinking that the company, as proactive as it is being, is lagging behind the likes of Google, which says its driverless cars have mastered all aspects of motorway driving and are well on the way to doing the same in towns.

The target is to put 100 autonomous cars into public hands by 2017, running a two-year trial to collect real-world data on the only loop of roads around Gothenburg where the trial has been given the go-ahead to run. Google says it will be selling driverless cars to the public to do whatever they want with by then – wherever they want. The leading competition is stiff, and Volvo has little hope of catching up.

What we know is that Volvo has committed to a deadline of 2020 for its promise that no one should die in a new Volvo, obviously excluding things like natural causes. The firm probably won’t take responsibility if someone has a heart attack at the wheel, but the interesting thing is that as part of the automation technology suite, Volvo is developing protocols to recognise a medical emergency in the driver, whereby the car would automatically take over, stop safely and call the emergency services. Even the staunchest anti-automation campaigner would agree that’s a good thing.

With the likes of Google and Mercedes also working on full automation in the name of safety, it’s a case of how soon it becomes preferable among the masses to let the car drive.

After that, as technology advances, it’s a question of how soon humans are deemed too dangerous to be allowed to drive. Then, ultimately, we may be banned from driving on public roads altogether. Statistically speaking it should be a good thing, but there’s no doubt that to many people it just doesn’t feel right.