The successful patent application marks the next step for the Californian company’s much-documented driverless car technology, giving unmanned vehicles the capability to react to road anomalies in the same way a human would.

As well as reading road signs, the new technology could enable the Google car to follow diversions, check for oncoming vehicles and identify and avoid unexpected obstacles.
The news follows Google’s purchase of social mapping company Waze in a speculated $1.3bn deal last June. The acquisition of the Israeli startup allowed Google to enhance its mapping capabilities by incorporating real time traffic information, offering users up-to-the-minute feedback on accidents and traffic jams.

Ken McCall commented: 'This is a really exciting time to be living in, with these sorts of developments making concepts that would have been laughed at a few years ago a real possibility in the near future. At Europcar we have always been first to embrace new technology and I am personally excited by the prospect of having Google do the driving for me'

Despite the patent only being awarded today after being filed in August last year, the company has not held back in its development of the futuristic Google car In 2012, Techcrunch reported the successful test run of the company’s fleet of self-driving vehicles, which travelled 300,000 miles autonomously without incident.