"We have no tolerance for any numbers higher than zero," said Acting Transportation Secretary Maria Cino. "Motorcyclists need to wear their helmets, drivers need to buckle up, and all motorists need to stay sober."

The annual report found that motorcycle fatalities rose for the eighth straight year, growing 13 percent since 2004. The government said 4,553 motorcyclists died in 2005, compared with 4,028 in 2004. Nearly half of the people who died were not wearing helmets.

Pedestrian deaths increased from 4,675 in 2004 to 4,881 in 2005. NHTSA said it was investigating the increase to try to learn what led to the growth.

"The technology is doable right now," says Carsten Bergmann, a VW lab manager. (Of course, getting the right data to the right car at the right time calls for fiendishly complicated threat-detection algorithms that are far easier with four cars than with hundreds of them.)

General Motors has gone one better than VW with a demonstration DSRC-equipped Cadillac CTS that stops itself to avoid accidents. Its enhanced stability-control system predicts where it's headed—like, into the rear end of another DSRC car stopped in the middle of the road—and prompts the onboard computer to apply the brakes without any input from the driver. The effect is very cool. It's also a little spooky, and many doubt that live-free-or-die Americans will ever sign off on fully autonomous vehicles.

Luckily, engineer Tomiji Sugimoto and his team at Honda R&D are working on a human-machine interface that will keep drivers in the loop. Head-up displays are a no-brainer. But Honda is also developing what's called haptic feedback, such as shaking steering wheels and pedals that vibrate.

"We're talking about a system that acts like a backseat driver," Sugimoto says. Except it's a backseat driver that's always right.