Google director Chris Urmson has declared that the company is committed to launching a self-driving car within the next five years, Digital Spy reports.
The project lead told attendees at the Technology, Entertainment and Design Conference that the company's automated vehicles will reduce road accidents.
"Some 1.2 million people are killed on the roads around the world each year. That number is equivalent to a jet falling out of the sky every day," he said.
Google revealed a prototype version of its electric pod car in December, a vehicle that is expected to launch with no steering wheel or other conventional controls.
However, the tester models do have traditional controls as traffic laws prevent them from being trialled without.
Urmson also shared details about how Google's driverless cars respond to unexpected situations, including a woman in an electric wheelchair chasing a duck and a child on the road in a toy car. The vehicle is said to have slowed down appropriately in both instances.
"There is nowhere in the handbook about how to deal with that situation," he said.
The news follows comments about self-driving cars from Tesla founder Elon Musk, who believes that human-driven vehicles could one day be banned if automated transport gains widespread adoption.
