When it comes to driving, human beings have an appalling safety record. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, more than 2.35 million people were injured in car accidents last year in the United States. That's a breathtaking statistic until you consider that 37,261 others were killed - and that's the lowest number since 1961.

But a new breed of prototype automobile can drive without the help of unreliable humans, and major car companies are paying attention.

In 2007, the federal government's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency sponsored the Urban Challenge. Corporate-sponsored teams from all over the nation retrofitted regular cars with sensors and artificial intelligence, transforming them into fully autonomous ground vehicles. Eleven finalists unleashed their driverless cars on a peaceful mock city where they proved capable of obeying traffic signals while merging, passing and parking.

After winning the Urban Challenge together, General Motors teamed up with Carnegie Mellon to form a five-year, $5 million dollar Collaborative Research Laboratory. The manager of the group, Bakhtiar Litkouhi, wants GM to leverage university brainpower to accelerate the development of autonomous driving technology. "It's important for these features to become production viable," said Litkouhi, who has a Ph.D. in electrical engineering and systems science.

With motor-vehicle accidents claiming more than a million lives worldwide annually, car companies are pushing the development of technology that increasingly borrows control from erratic human beings, allowing the car to drive itself.

Low-level autonomous safety features have been around in various forms for decades.