Comma.ai's hands-off driving tech faces federal probe after two fatal crashes
Comma's hands-off driving tech under investigation after 2 fatal crashes
The NHTSA has opened an investigation into Comma.ai's aftermarket driver assistance system, openpilot, following five reported crashes—two of which killed three people. The crashes involved the tech failing to detect or respond to slow or stopped vehicles in the same lane. Some incidents may have involved modified versions of the software, including a third-party fork called FrogPilot. Comma.ai, founded by George Hotz, makes devices that control adaptive cruise control and lane centering, similar to Tesla Autopilot and GM Super Cruise.
When abrupt braking maneuvers are required, openpilot is designed to be limited in the amount of deceleration and acceleration that it can produce.
- john_strinlai
>Some of the crashes, including at least one of the fatal incidents, may have involved the use of “forked” or modified versions of Comma.ai’s software, according to the ODI.
i am still hesitant of tesla and similarly large players, it seems absolutely wild to me that people are using a fork of a small company's software to drive their car.
- dymk
Over what period of time, and how many miles? How does that rate compare with other LKAS / ACC systems? Were they using the experimental vison-based distance estimation system & comma driven longitudinal control, or the car's stock radar based ACC (which bypasses comma control entirely)?
There's not enough details in the article to say if the comma contributed or not to the crashes.
- WithinReason
AFAIK their driver monitoring is very good and checks if you're looking at the road, so I wonder how this happened.
- rich_sasha
Unrelated, but it seems to be that “Comma” is a terrible name for a system that might be involved (even not at fault) in a crash resulting in life-changing injuries.
- phoronixrly
This goes to show that any car, be it internal combustion, electric, manually operated or self-driving is still a car, and thus is still capable of inflicting death (among other negatives). The difference is still just in the frequency of deaths (and with self-driving this is still under debate).