[coddle-hark]

> They are open about their mistakes, issues and tradeoffs, much more so than other companies. I don't think its right for engineers use this as a cudgel to beat them over the head.

This openness gives us consumers an opportunity to look under the hood and evaluate the tech for what it is, which is a good thing and should be applauded.

However.

I’ve used that freedom to look at their code and processes and I’ve decided that this is not software that I want my life to depend on. There are serious outstanding bugs that Comma doesn’t have the manpower to investigate fully, their default assumption seems to be that the hardware is faulty, their test suite is regularly failing, pair programming / code review is sometimes used and sometimes not, PRs are created and merged without a description or comment. That’s just scraping the surface, without going into things like whether or not Python is a good choice for this sort of thing or if there’s a bug in my car’s CAN implantation that will get triggered by this and end up killing me.

All in all, I trust Volvo more than I trust Comma.ai. Maybe that trust is misplaced? For what it’s worth I don’t really trust any level 2 self driving tech.

[bko]

I'm honestly curious why you trust Volvo more.

They're completely opaque. There's no issue board, can't even find a terms of service online. No over the air updates. Can't even find a technical manual or version number of the software you're running. I assume you just have some car salesman point you to the button to press. Independent reviews put open pilot much higher than Volvo despite volvo having much more reach and influence in the industry

Like I've said elsewhere, they have a very loyal user base, probably driven more miles than the others combined, lots of discussion online and are more open by a mile. They even store the raw video to train, not just feature vectors.

To me this is all signs that their product is relatively strong. And I'd be willing to bet their processes and standards are much better than big auto.

[iancarroll]

> And I'd be willing to bet their processes and standards are much better than big auto.

Comma has a neat product, but I really do not agree with comments like this. The auto industry is terrible, but they are miles ahead of Comma in the process realm.

The industry has spent a lot of time on safety standards like ASIL and AUTOSAR. They would never allow Comma to ship, because it is written in Python, a pausable language (absurd), and without any hardware protections like lockstep processors or watchdogs, if only because it is literally a consumer phone. A system connected to the steering and acceleration of a vehicle freezing while still in control is ridiculous.

Comma will kill someone; it is only a matter of when, not if.

[chrisjs95]

All the critical pieces are written in C. He's talked about it many, many times.

[iancarroll]

This just isn't true as far as I am aware. The vehicle interfaces[0] and control loop are all in Python. It doesn't help if other components are in C if your commands to the vehicle are interrupted by GC pauses.

Even if it was true, and it was all in C, it is only better because there is no GC -- there are still a myriad of potential issues that the auto industry routinely addresses in both software and hardware that Comma either cannot or does not. Not to say they are perfect, but Comma is well below any sort of bar.

[0] https://github.com/commaai/openpilot/tree/master/selfdrive/c...

[wikibob]

Liability.

Volvo has something to lose. Comma.ai does not.