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Comment by fionaellie | Hacker News Reader

Despite all the FUD in the comments, the Comma is the single best thing I've ever added to any car, ever. From now on, I'll only ever buy a car that's compatible. It makes me feel safer by a huge margin (I might or might not have fallen asleep one night on a long road trip and awoken to my car driving along happily, and there may or may not have been numerous times when my car stopped me in time). Driving fatigue is nearly eliminated, and comfort for passengers is higher.

It's far better at driving than either FSD or Autopilot, though it doesn't navigate or change lanes without input, but for long road trips those things don't matter to me at all.

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> It makes me feel safer

You sound like a really unsafe driver who shouldn’t be on the road, period.

    Driving fatigue is nearly eliminated

Because now you can be asleep at the wheel and arrive to your destination feeling refreshed? ;)

I mean, I get what he's trying to say, but it's a bit scary.

> I might or might not have fallen asleep one night on a long road trip and awoken to my car driving along happily

Drivers like you ruin lives.

I would rephrase that:

"Drivers like you end lives."

I bought a car in 2023. It's my first ever. I was 55 years old.

I am a lifelong cyclist and motorcyclist. I love bikes. But in 2023 I had a debilitating accident with life-changing injuries, and I had to stop riding upright bikes.

I now drive several times a week. I still don't like it. But I do understand the pressures and risks facing car drivers much better. Oh, and this car is an automatic, so I understand those more too; I had never driven an automatic before, because I'm not American. I learned to drive in 1986 or so, and got my license about 20 years later. 100% manual gearboxes all the way.

Making cars safer for the occupants and easier to drive is THE WORST THING TO DO. There are decades of research in risk compensation demonstrating why.

This company's own webpage is awful. It merely says:

« The comma 3X is custom hardware designed to live in your car, and purpose built to run openpilot. »

It does not explain what "openpilot" is or does, and does not even bother to link to it.

This is a bad thing. It is not to be encouraged.

> I might or might not have fallen asleep one night on a long road trip and awoken to my car driving along happily

This should have been a sign to re-evaluate your relationship to driving, not to double-down on becoming reliant on Comma. What a horrifying anecdote.

You mean FUD like

  THIS IS ALPHA QUALITY SOFTWARE FOR RESEARCH PURPOSES ONLY. THIS IS NOT A PRODUCT.

(from https://github.com/commaai/openpilot/blob/master/README.md)

> I might or might not have fallen asleep one night on a long road trip and awoken to my car driving along happily

My nightmare is getting smashed to pieces by people like you and your insurance refusing to pay because you found it funny to fiddle with your car. You being bankrupt will not help me.

If OP had not been using a Comma, they still might have fallen asleep at the wheel that night. With the Comma, a crisis was averted. Without the Comma, they would almost certainly have wrecked.

If you fall asleep at night, your car shouldn't just happily drive around with some alpha software and hope for the best. Instead, the car should WAKE YOU THE FUCK UP when it detects you're becoming fatigued/drowsy and tell you to get some sleep. Driver fatigue/drowsiness detection is nothing new and implemented in lots and lots of cars. Get one of those instead of resorting to some dubious software which is most probably illegal to use in most countries.

comma.ai devices do have drivee monitoring which is activated as default

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