I know there are a few of us on this forum with comma devices; I can’t recall who is speaking from experience vs. impressions. To offer my firsthand experience of a year of usage with probably 8-9,000 miles driven with a Comma 3x at this point (using OPGM, FrogPilot, and most recently the Chevy Bolt-specific fork StarPilot):
1. Manufacturers don’t test OpenPilot / Comma. It’s fully a 3rd party DIY man-in-the-middle hack of your car’s lane keep assist (and adaptive cruise control, if you have it)
2. The way OpenPilot works is it sits in between your lane keep camera and the rest of the car computers. When active, it augments the normal lane keep camera signals and sends turning and accel/decel commands based on what it sees ahead of it. While the stock lane keep system and adaptive cruise are tested by GM yes, they have never tested it with OpenPilot. Fully a caveat emptor situation.
3. That said, OpenPilot does what it can to offer a safe model for driver engagement. Pressing brake at any time disengages. You can directly steer around potholes collaboratively with the system. They limit the amount of torque the system can command so an average driver can override it when the system gets it wrong. You can read their safety outline for details:
openpilot is an operating system for robotics. Currently, it upgrades the driver assistance system on 300+ supported cars. - commaai/openpilot
github.com
4. They make it clear you’re the driver and this is only a level 2 assistance system. This involves an EXTREMELY CLEAR first run experience that table-thumps that you’re responsible for your car’s safe operation. It warns you as much to always watch it, and it’ll disengage the system if you spend much time looking at your phone or dozing off. (Driver facing camera)
It’s not a system for everyone, and it has things it’s been good at over the last year (adding highway lane centering and adaptive cruise to a 2017 that never came with it!) and things where it overpromises and frightens (city driving 😱).
For folks who know the compromise between promise and letdown that beta software offers, and who can afford the price of entry and are curious, it’s an interesting experiment to say the least. I don’t recommend it generally. It’s not a finished polished product. You’ve gotta be tech oriented, comfortable with reading some discord channels and dealing with different software forks and updates and whatnot.
And, I never forget I’m the driver responsible for my family’s safety, even though I appreciate how it reduces how much effort I have to put into steering the car on a long road trip. I’ve used it on probably every drive longer than 40 mins for the last year - with one or two hands on the wheel at all times, still!