Games : Minecraft crashes on launch with EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION, Problematic frame: ig4dev32.dll or ig4dev64.dll or ig4icd64.dll

When I try to launch Minecraft 1.7.4 or newer, the game crashes on startup, and the game output screen says this:

#  EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION (0xc0000005) at pc=*, pid=*, tid=*
#
# JRE version: Java™ SE Runtime Environment (7.0_51-b13) (build 1.7.0_51-b13)
# Java VM: Java HotSpot™ Client VM (* mixed mode, sharing windows-* )
# Problematic frame:
# C  [ig4dev32.dll+0x3e88]
OR
# C  [ig4dev64.dll+0x55ec]
OR 
# C  [ig4icd64.dll+0x84930a]

This happens with both Java 7 and 8.

What causes this error, and what can I do to fix the issue?