Federal regulators are now looking into Comma AI, the company behind the aftermarket openpilot devices that a lot of Gen 1 Rivian owners have been using to get hands-off lane centering on roads Rivian’s own Highway Assist won’t touch.
NHTSA opened a preliminary investigation on September 21 covering five crashes where comma-equipped vehicles hit slow or stopped vehicles in their lane. Three people died and eleven were injured, and the agency says the systems were powered on or engaged in multiple of those crashes. One appears to match a February crash in Louisiana where a Toyota RAV4 hit a stopped police car with its emergency lights on.
The probe covers the comma three, comma 3X, comma four, and openpilot itself, and NHTSA also wants to know whether drivers were running modified forks (pretty much modified software not necessarily from Comma AI).
Here’s why it hits home for us. Rivian R1S and R1T support arrived in openpilot 0.9.8 last year, covering 2022, 2023, and 2024 models, and a lot of Gen 1 owners jumped on it. Early on, owners on the forums reported that openpilot relied on Rivian’s own radar for distance control, which is the exact function under scrutiny here. That’s secondhand and I haven’t verified whether current builds still work that way.
Jose’s Take
I’ve never had a problem with the people behind Comma AI, and I think it’s super awesome tech to be building, but you have to be super careful using open source tech like this. Be aware that this isn’t native to your vehicle and you should be prepared to take control at any time, just like you would with Rivian’s native Autonomy+ or even Tesla FSD (Supervised). Just be careful.
If you’re running a comma in your R1, keep your eyes up and your hands close, and I’ll share updates with you all as NHTSA’s investigation moves forward.
It is horrible about the deaths and injuries in these crashes and the article nails it. Even FSD as great as it works it is far from perfect. These ADAS systems all say supervised. There’s a camera in my Model Y watching me watch the road.
Other than a few YouTube videos, I’ve no idea how Comma works, but what I saw in the videos you definitely need to pay attention to what is going on.
I know there are a lot of people that are fans of Comma but I would never trust a 3rd party single camera mounted to my windshield. People give Tesla a hard time for vision only but this feels so much worse not having it integrated into the vehicle
I don’t see how it’s any worse. If the driver is being responsible and paying attention to the road, it’s just like any other ADAS system. Also, worth noting that the Comma is not a single camera – it’s a 3-camera system (2 front facing, one driver monitoring).
Right, but it’s an external device mounted to your windshield… No side cameras or rear cameras…
There’s just something about driving a heavy, powerful vehicle and autonomy that irks me the wrong way. I don’t think I’ll ever trust it to drive me around.
I actually trust Autonomy+ quite a bit but I will never not focus on what’s happening and I’ll always be ready to take over because other people are always the surprise.