[birken]

Comma is far and away the best version of "automatic cruise control" that exists in any consumer car. If you think Comma is hacky then wait until you see Tesla's version, which costs $10k and only works on one brand of car!

The stock "automatic cruise control" is most cars is far worse and far more dangerous than Comma, and those companies aren't getting taken down by lawsuits. At the end of the day, the driver is responsible for the operation of the vehicle. Comma is a tool the driver can use, and one that undoubtedly makes driving safer for themselves and other vehicles on the road.

[kelnos]

> If you think Comma is hacky then wait until you see Tesla's version, which costs $10k and only works on one brand of car!

What does the cost and number of supported vehicles have to do with whether or not the software is hacky? (Hint: nothing; it has nothing to do with it.)

> The stock "automatic cruise control" is most cars is far worse and far more dangerous than Comma

That's a pretty extraordinary claim to make without presenting any evidence.

> one that undoubtedly makes driving safer for themselves and other vehicles on the road.

Ditto.

The front page of the Comma website claims "millions" of miles have been driven using it; given that in the US there's about 1 fatality per 100 million miles driven, I don't think we have anywhere near enough data to make any claims about Comma's safety. It may actually be safer, but I don't think we have a way to know that yet.

And also, given that Comma supports several different vehicles, I suspect that we'll have to consider its safety record on a per-make (and in some cases possibly per-model) basis, not on the system as a whole, in order to compare apples to apples.

[rwiggum]

"automatic cruise control" is free and comes with every Tesla. It is not $10k. It is what they call "autopilot" and is free. "Full self driving" is what is $10k and includes automatic navigation on highways when using "automatic cruise control"

[PhasmaFelis]

> only works on one brand of car!

Is that a downside? Anyone who's ever struggled with hardware driver problems knows that the more hardware configurations your software (notionally) supports, the more likely you are to have show-stopping bugs.

In a home PC, some reliability is arguably a fair trade-off for versatility. Not in a car.

[varelse]

Um... Have you driven a Mach E yet? No interest in its upcoming FSD, but the adaptive cruise control and lane assistance is wonderfully conservative and useful.

[birken]

I've only driven my car, but Consumer Reports tested a bunch of cars and rated Comma the best [1]. Maybe another car since then is better, but of course Comma is always getting updated and you just download the new version to your device when it comes out.

1: https://data.consumerreports.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/...

[varelse]

After reading a description of the comma device and how it's being used it seems uncannily like how my Mach E drives. But also as both my first EV and my first semi self-driving car, perhaps I have a different set of standards. My TLDR was that the adaptive cruise control and automatic lane keeping extended my daily driving range by several hundred miles by reducing cognitive load significantly. It was the best 900 miles I've ever driven.

But watching people nitpick various variants of electric crossover SUVs, I realize I would probably like just about all of them because none of my cars have been anything like that up to now.

So I keyed in my other two cars to see if I could put the comma into it and alas I cannot. They are 2013 and 2016 models respectively.

And yes the system in the Mach E is brand new:

https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a32896537/fords-driver-ass...