Regardless of when they actually show up, note that it’s two tech firms doing this, and not two carmakers. Driverless cars are not about the car. You can design something free of the constraints of a steering wheel and pedals, as Mate Rimac has for his Verne project. But an adapted EV will do perfectly well, as Waymo’s many Jaguar iPaces prove (they’ve been operating in the US for a while now, and are a common sight on LA’s streets). Nor is it about the sensors: more confident, reductionist systems like Wayve’s can find their way with just a few relatively cheap cameras.

Instead, like seemingly everything else these days, it’s all about the AI. Hybrid systems like Waymo’s combine artificial intelligence with conventional code and high-definition maps, and can demonstrate to lawmakers that they will stop at a stop sign because they have been told to. Autonomous trucking firm Aurora takes a similar approach, and refers to it as ‘verifiable AI’.

Wayve’s ‘end-to-end’ system is very different: a black box takes in all the sensor data and outputs driving instructions without reference to rules or maps. You can’t show regulators that you have told it to stop at stop signs, but you can prove in simulations and on the road that it will. Wayve argues that its single neural network is seamless and smarter and, like a human driver, can drive pretty much anywhere once it has learned the local rules.

There’s beef between proponents of the two system types over safety, transparency and applicability, but the governments who control their fate don’t seem to care much about the difference, or to have figured out a driving test for them. Nor are they likely to. The big tech firms have found autonomous driving among the toughest of all the nuts they’ve tried to crack, despite attracting the best brains and paying vast salaries. Governments certainly don’t do the latter, and speaking off the record one former senior UK Government minister told me that the civil service hadn’t been capable of providing him with actionable advice on AI.

So, trials like these serve a double purpose. Like any other young driver, AI needs to learn on the road before it can be given a licence. Wayve already tests extensively in London, but with safety drivers aboard and ready to take over, and without paying passengers. It will learn more from operating commercially, wholly autonomously and with a much bigger fleet, while the Government gets to test empirically the safety which it can’t or won’t assess in the lab. As in China and the US, it also gets to devolve the decision to permit driverless cabs to the local authority, in this case Transport for London. Central Government gets to watch how it goes before formulating national policy, and can blame Sadiq Khan if it doesn’t go well.

If this seems an incredibly lax way to regulate driverless cars – turn a few loose and see if they kill anyone – it is at least highly self-policing. One bad crash killed GM’s Cruise self-driving project, and firms like Wayve which rely on investors’ cash and confidence won’t go driverless in full public view until they’re sure they’re ready. The Government does of course have safety data from the autonomous driving firms and won’t let just anyone test. And this approach has worked in the US and China, where large-scale pilots have become permanent, expanded to other cities, and given autonomous driving firms there a huge advantage of data and experience which probably. Waymo has done ten million fully driverless rides across five US cities now, and more than fifty Chinese cities have their own autonomous driving standards which apply over 20,000 miles of road. Wayve will need to give a lot of rides to catch up. If you’re a Brit, hailing one is your patriotic duty.