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Comment by evanescent | Hacker News Reader

Has anyone here tried using one of these? On the surface they seem to be relatively reliable and safe. I am tempted to get try one out since their driver cam gives me confidence that I won't become complacent while using one of these self-driving systems.

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I have a Comma Two and have driven maybe 4000 miles on it around the SF Bay area. It is somewhat limited in that they can only steer as hard as the car's lanekeeping system is willing to steer. The driver monitoring helps although I am middle aged and pretty careful anyway so it's only actually beeped at me on a handful of occasions. Honestly, it is not the type of device where you want to take your eyes off the road, I think the DM is actually a little more lenient than it should be. In generally, you are basically as alert as if you are driving. The advantage is that you aren't spending mental energy keeping the car centered in the lane or maintaining a good following distance, or straining your arms holding onto a steering wheel. Long car trips are much more comfortable and less as a result.

It's not very useful on city streets or curvy mountain roads, the places where it shines are freeways and stop and go traffic -- the boring driving.

It has been quite reliable, most of the kinks have been worked out and they have enough users that there are not any serious bugs on the standard releases. I have reported minor bugs and had them fixed in a matter of days, which is always amazing for an OSS project. If you have an uncommon car there can be tuning issues from time to time. There is also a fairly strong user community on Discord that can help you troubleshoot things.

It works best on Toyotas and Hyundais, Honda and Subarus are a little worse, and the other manufacturers is really hit or miss--there may be individual models where someone got it working.

It is not a consumer product, you need to be somewhat capable of troubleshooting the occasional issue, reading documentation, dealing with occasional quirks etc.

Installation is not consumer friendly (though I'm sure any auto shop would happily install it), but functionality certainly is. My wife who is not particularly tech savvy has no problem using Comma.

I have a car that isn't even the best for Comma because of steering limits (Honda CRV), and on road trips I've been able to not touch the steering wheel or accelerator/brake for 30+ minutes on open stretches of the 101. You'd think it doesn't matter all that much, but it saves so much energy. A 4 hour drive feels like a 1 hour drive. Monitoring that the car is driving sensibly uses far less energy than actually driving.

And as you say, in bumper to bumper traffic it is just amazing. I was in a 2.5 (!) hour backup between LA and San Diego a few weeks ago and Comma did 99% of the driving. And the only times I had to take over were when other frustrated drivers were doing insane things out of boredom or anger that endangered me. Computers don't get frustrated or angry! The aggravation saved on that one trip paid for the cost.

I use my comma two everyday. Works great. Support from the company is non-existent.

I'm kind of pissed because I bought it in the last few months and now they've come out with another one. There should be a trade-in and upgrade program.

They're still selling comma 2 and I still think they support comma 1.

I don't see what's some awesome about this new one, to be honest. I'd like the next one to add blind spot sensors for cars that don't have them.

It has better cameras. Higher dynamic range which means it can handle tunnels, shade, etc. better. The cameras can also see further which means the possibility for traffic light behavior in the future.

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