As tlrobinson says, I was trying to clarify the content of the article, as the title could easily be mis-interpreted to mean that there were no restrictions.

In addition, I suspect that the cars will be 'self-driving' cars rather than 'driverless' (the distinction being that the former has a human behind the wheel, which can take the wheel at a moments notice).

As for the rest of the world, from the article:

  The US States of California, Nevada and Florida have all approved tests of the vehicles. In California alone, Google's driverless car has done more than 300,000 miles on the open road.

  In 2013, Nissan carried out Japan's first public road   test of an autonomous vehicle on a highway.

  And in Europe, the Swedish city of Gothenburg has given Volvo permission to test 100 driverless cars - although that trial is not scheduled to occur until 2017.

The case of 100 volvo cars on the streets 2017 is a bit different than just allowing controlled tests on public roads, that is 100 cars given to customers for every day use, not engineers.

It's allowed in a few states in the US.

Last time I went to California I saw one up close, that was pretty neat (though I don't know if it was driving itself at the time)!

Audi is currently (as in this week) test driving self-driving cars on an elevated expressway in Tampa this week, that has been shut down for this purpose.

http://www.wtsp.com/story/tech/2014/07/28/driverless-car-hit...

VW has been testing the tech for decades looks like its almost ready for testing on the public roads.

And I know they have been testing driverless farm machinery near where I live since the late 70's

I see a few driverless cars out and about each week.

That's not what the title says.

I don't understand the distinction. If the UK is allowing tests of driverless cars, it must be allowing them on the roads, and of course "in January" means "starts in January", what else would it mean

Driverless cars are a risky unproven technology, and done wrong could easily kill people.

It'd be like taking "FDA approves new drug for human testing" and making the headline "FDA to allow human use of new untested drug."

Both are technically true, but the latter makes it sound like a widespread thing being done regardless of poorly understood risks. And that's misleading, since it's being done in very limited scope to help us understand and reduce those risks.

It is true that driverless cars are a risky unproven technology, while human-driven cars are a proven killer.

While the title is technically true, it could easily be interpreted to mean anyone could buy or build a driverless car and drive it on UK roads starting in January.

"in January" could mean "only in January" rather than "for some unspecified length of time but starting in January".

However the very first line of the article say's "from January", which implies the latter.