Self-driving vehicles are all the rage with big hopes for the future but a new study says they aren’t ready to take on the task of driving all by themselves.

US consumer advocate organisation Consumer Watchdog has collated reports from different robot car companies and concluded that at this stage autonomous vehicles are not ready to be deployed without a human driver behind the wheel.

They found there were too many instances of disengagements, or times when they lost control and human intervention was required.

Serving as a good yardstick, the Google car has experienced software glitches, executed unwanted manoeuvres and had issues with dealing with other cars on the road, construction zones and generally perceiving its surroundings.

Robot cars by Delphi also had problems with poor lane markings, pedestrians, unexpected manoeuvres by other drivers and changing lanes in heavy traffic.

John Simpson from Consumer Watchdog says it is premature to fully trust an autonomous vehicle on public roads.

“While there has been improvement, the report shows robot cars simply aren’t ready to be released to roam our roads without human drivers.”