Video: If you're getting an Uber taxi in Pittsburgh, check if there's a driver

After Singapore saw its version of self-driving taxis, Uber launched its first fleet of driverless cars in Pittsburg in United States.

While more vehicles will be added to its driverless fleet by the end of 2016, the company won't be ready to completely do away with human drivers for quite some time.

In the first test runs that took place on Wednesday, two engineers accompanied passengers to keep a handle on things. One of them took the driver's seat, his hands poised over the self-moving steering, ready to grab it in case something went wrong.

In the video above, a journalist talks of her ride on a self driving Uber taxi. On the return journey, she also drove the car herself, switching out from auto to manual whenever there was a stopped car in her path – because, instead of driving around it, her vehicle would stop behind it.

Autonomous vehicles are closer than ever to becoming a widespread reality. Floated as an idea in the 1930s, the first self-driving vehicle was tested in 1980. The video below explores what a driverless future will look like. Because computers don't get drunk, or look at their phones or get distracted, auto-related fatalities are expected to drop as more and more autonomous cars hit roads.

Here's another view from behind the wheel.

But the technology is not yet completely fallible.

Tesla, whose CEO Elon Musk has said, "Get in, go to sleep, wake up at your destination by 2019," had its first fatality while one of the cars was on autopilot. Here's a news report that explores the story. The car's sensors failed to detect an 18-wheel truck against a brightly-lit sky.

Musk also released a video of the same car previously preventing a crash while on autopilot.