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Comment by echelon | Hacker News Reader

I've never heard anything about comma.ai's safety. I wonder if it's just not high profile enough to have been involved in public incidents?

Also bummer on no FJ Cruiser support. :(

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In early 2020 I used a Comma 2 on my Honda Civic for a few weeks.

It had one failure, but the way it failed was so alarming I'm hesitant to ever try them again. It not only failed while engaged, but it froze which meant it still showed the bright green outline indicating "I'm still engaged!" with no alert sounds, visual indication of disengagement, or automatic restart.

I only noticed something was off when my car started to drift outside the lanes during a curve, which took me longer to notice than necessary because it still looked engaged and it looked like a somewhat typical case of understeering until I started exiting the lane. It also never booted back on again, so something went seriously wrong during an otherwise routine drive.

Stock driver assistance systems (e.g. Rivian Driver+, Tesla Autopilot) have redundant computers it can fall back on if the primary fails. If Comma offered a self-contained device that was demonstrably redundant at a hardware level I'd be willing to give it another shot!

I swear by my comma 3. Orlando to Austin, 45 minutes hands on the wheel.

It almost took an exit I didn’t want to take in Louisiana, other than that no major issues. Works well in rain.

You are still driving the car, it’s just less intense.

What is the experience driving the car? "You are still driving the car"—is it akin to tesla's autopilot, or is the experience difference? In some 3 y'o videos I see individuals driving without hands on the steering wheel—not sure if that is what the experience is like day to day with the device (?).

Yeah I don’t use my hands on the steering wheel when the comma is engaged. Haven’t spent much time in Tesla’s to know how it compares, someone else might know better.

In a Tesla, driver monitoring is two-fold.

First, it senses the weight of your hand on the wheel. Whenever it steers, it senses the torque on the wheel from your hand. Even if your hand is moving with the wheel, you will end up applying a tiny amount of torque that it senses. However, when driving straight, I often find it warning me to apply a small amount of torque on the steering wheel so it knows my hand is there.

Second, there's a camera behind the rear-view mirror that detects your gaze. If it thinks you're looking at your phone or the touch screen for more than a few seconds, it tells you to watch the road.

The legal situation is the same as FSD. You remain the driver in control at all times, regardless of steering assistance being provided. If you want to drive a car without your hands on the wheel, well that's a personal choice. It's not fundamentally different than taking your hands off the wheel with cruise control engaged.

If your navigation software says "Continue on I-50 for 350 miles", you will likely not need to touch the steering wheel for that stretch. If it says "Take exit 123 in 1/2 mile", you grab the wheel, take the exit, and let the comma take over after that decision. It feels more like a competent copilot than a full driver replacement.

What's the chance that a driver will sit there for 350 miles and not pull out their phone, fall asleep, or otherwise drift off while sitting for hours doing literally nothing but required to be fully alert.

Comma uses its driver-facing camera to detect is the driver is paying attention vs. looking at their phone or falling asleep. It chirps at you if you’re distracted and will eventually disengage if you’re not paying attention.

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