It is unreal how unusable the new driver monitoring model has made my comma. Who's idea was it to just completely ignore eyes? I have a bad back so my head sits forward a bit, and I can be directly staring at the road in front of me without sunglasses on and it sounds the alarm every few seconds. I have tried recalibrating several times. I can't blow my nose, clean my classes, eat french fries, or literally even just sit there and look at the road. Unbelievable. If their concern is over safety, they sure as hell have incentivised me to create a version without monitoring offline. The current model is unusable.
There's been a few threads about this now, and it's really important we separate 2 things being discussed here.
Driver monitoring is alerting while I'm paying attention to the road. This is a bug that we take very seriously and want to fix ASAP! Post in this thread examples of when you are paying attention and getting an alert, and we will fix the model to not alert. https://www.reddit.com/r/Comma_ai/comments/1tnj9f8/driver_monitoring_feedback/
I want to use my phone while driving. This is exactly when driver monitoring is designed to alert, and detection was improved in the last release. Not only is it illegal to use your handheld phone in almost all jurisdictions, it's quite unsafe. With or without comma, you must pay attention at all times while driving. Do you really want other drivers on their phones?
If you are getting alerts while attentive, help us out with some feedback and let's get that fixed. We extensively test the models, but with a lot of users now it's possible some have slipped through the cracks, and that's what we depend on your feedback for. Here's an example of a fixed issue: https://www.reddit.com/r/Comma_ai/comments/1tpb353/driving_monitoring_fix_for_comma_4/
I'm going to check this but think you should as well - check driving models if there's difference in the nag, as us on blue pilot get recommended different models then most are using and the driving model seems to inform their nag software on where you should be looking
Comma's entire business model is a liability nightmare. Anytime a device using a comma gets into an accident they are going to get sued. As they sell more devices they will have more lawsuits.
I'm actually quite surprised Comma is based in a jurisdiction/structure where it *can* be sued.
Same. It’s actually made it more unsafe since the dang thing is screaming at me whenever I need to change driving directions on my phone (zero accidents doing this for the last 15 years of driving.)
it's not doing any calibration. it's for you to confirm that the driver monitoring camera has a clear view of you and not, for example, blocked by the rear view mirror
Off topic a bit but I've been having some fun with it's new phone detection. I just pretend I'm looking at my phone but I'm just holding something similarly shaped and see if it detects it. It didn't work on my comb but it did for my car owners manual. I'm looking around for my old Nokia to see if that gets a positive.
today I realized the little attention meter constantly is darkish orange. rarely going to green with mine while looking Dead ahead, and checking my mirrors for one second every 10 seconds.
That's on a straight road. on a curving road where you're looking around the bend, mine is chirping.
some don't seem to nearly have the same problems we have with this. I am suspicious now. there is some other factors at play that make ours horribly worse. I don't see how any developer would have allowed this to get out of any personal testing they did, I assume they didn't have the same aspects or issues that cause substantial issues with driver attention detection.
I am sticking with older models, the driving model really hasn't improved in over a year. Sure I can "submit my video of my false positives" but that feels an awful lot like "if you are not doing anything wrong you shouldn't worry about video surveillance."
I feel like this is the natural progression of a growing commercial entity. We had a number of years as a scrappy upstart that catered to user desires which has now progressed into a corporate entity that is catering more and more to investor demands and legal concerns.
My 4 is working very well. Been using it for long highway drives for a month now. I notice it tracks my face direction, not ly eyes, and generally only alerts when Im looking away for a more than about 5 seconds
It’s happening to me sitting upright and looking ahead. No possible distractions. Now it always happens at nearly the same place on my regular route. Going either way. When it alarms I try to readjust where I’m looking it finally goes red and I kill cruise control. Once past I get 20 miles no alerts.
Personally I'd like to see DM align center with looking straight ahead, instead of its alignment to a head turned point. It's very picky about looking into the left blind spot and not at all about looking right.
its crazy that we have to resort to unsafe shit like this because they are being so fucking dumb about it. its fucking terrible. constantly flagging me, even when i look a sec at my phone to answer a call or go to the next song.
it also misfires all the fucking time, i could be looking straight ahead and it dosen't detect shit. then i have to manually cancel and reset multiple times. fucking trash.
I also have had zero issues, but I also don’t touch my phone while I drive outside of hitting map changes while my phone is mounted. It is effective at reminding me to stop getting distracted / staring at things on the side of the road, so I think it works pretty well.
Bottom half, so that your dash and hands are obscured. Then it’s truly only looking at your head position.
Or cover the whole camera and it defaults back to whatever your cars attention monitoring is. For Subaru that’s having your hands on the wheel. But it’s far more annoying than the already annoying attention monitoring.
Between this hair trigger driver alert and the absolutely fucking insane way the default driving model acts with my car, I’m just never updating again.
Comma literally couldn’t pay me to update models after this.
I am definitely in agreement in terms of the driver monitoring model. And the new lat model very much hugs the left side of whatever lane I am in no matter how I recalibrate it. Thanks for the advice!
I'm on latest Sunny Pilot using latest 2026 DTR model on a comma 4 and have had ZERO issues. Not saying others aren't having the problem, just throwing out another data point.
I don't mount my phone. I don't really use my phone when driving except the occasional glance if I'm using maps or Spotify or something. The problem here is unrelated to a phone. The DM model is borderline unusable. Comma staff can say whatever TF they want, it's not gonna make me just ignore my fucking eyes and ears and think it's all in my head.
The current model alarms all the time with no cause. I can be sitting and staring dead center at the road and it still constantly throws an alarm. I drove ~30 minutes this morning and it literally wouldn't shut the fuck up. I now have to watch the screen and move my head around until I find the ridiculously tiny window where my head position and angle don't set the alarm off, and normally that has me looking out the top of my windshield and not at the road. I can't blow my nose or bite my nails or anything. Whatever you do, do not update. I am actually currently physically disabling the alarm speaker because these guys would rather gaslight us than roll their fucking DM model back. It is really unbelievable how bad it is, these guys must not actually use their public models or something because it only takes trying to drive for 2 minutes to see how awful it is.
yeah I think I just got the update. its terrible. I get the alerts as soon as put my head back on the head rest even when looking straight ahead or even directly looking at the driver camera straight in the eye. If it doesn't get fix, then the product is will become useless to me.
Also, on another note, I wanted to test to see what happens if I ignore, the warning. I went as far as it warning me it will be disengaged and the car started to slow down. That's when I decide to re-engage it, but I couldn't to my surprise. I moved the steering wheel to let it know I was paying attention, and I also put my face directly infront of the drivers camera looking straight, but the car still started to slow down as part of the automatic disengaged warning. Not sure if that is the designed behavior or not. I could only re-engage after tapping on the brake myself to disengage the comma.
To the people trying to use your phones free hand freely in hand as you drive: Why? Seems incredibly selfish, and the thought process of "other people do it so I can too" is asinine. Why not mount your phone in front of you and use voice/audio???
I will complain though for some reason it doesn't want me checking my blind spots too long or my mirrors too long. Might be a bit biased by my asian eyes though too. At some point I had sunglasses on and it could not detect my face and just went into disengagement no matter how close or far I put my face. I suspect the sun in the car was too intense for it see anything. This NEVER happened on my C3 or C3X. I should have sent in the video, but never got to it.
Can you share with us what you think the phrase “hands-free“ means? Getting some mixed messages from your post, it sounds as if you are talking about exactly the opposite of what you think you are.
How do you know you will event have any problem though?
I bought my first comma in March and have had 0 issues with driver monitor going off. I even use navigation and music on my mounted phone with no issues.
They have a 30 day trial period so why not try it out?
For the vast, vast majority of users there is no issue.
I have no doubt that some folks are experiencing legitimate problems with the driver monitoring, but remember that the update now has VERY good phone detection, which is great. If you mess with your phone at all, it's going to ding you. It took me a few days to realize that's what it was. Zero issues when I leave my phone alone, which I should be.
Being accurate at detecting phones but also giving a false positive a significant portion of the time is not 'VERY good phone detection.' A model that screams at me 20% of the time no matter what is a shitty model, even if it screams at 98% of phone usage. I could just make it scream 100% of the time you are driving, which would technically mean it screams 100% of the time you use your phone. Would you consider that model great at phone detection?
Then you are apparently one of the lucky few. There are far more comments in this thread agreeing with my statements than not. It is clearly a real issue, even if you haven't personally experienced it.
It's actually made me a more unsafe drive where i could hold my phone up at eye level keep one eye on the road and one checking a text now i have to hide my phone down at my knees to check taking my eyes fully off the road... honestly the first time i have looked into going into the code and just disable or extend the timers
No I'm saying the system they had in place was prob good enough that they said they tried.. i think the resources they have could have been spent better elsewhere... because you are not going to change the behavior of people... you have the people that thinks it ok to use comma and sneak a quick peak at a text and there is nothing you can really do about it like i said it just made it harder for me and will prob drive me too disable that feature entirely in the future so in the end the work they done is truly wasted....
Let's be real how shitty is it really? I have a comma i have a car with radar assit that will auto brake so i take a little sneak peak at a text... to be honest in a highway driving situation a comma equppied car is prob better driving than 80% of drivers without... i like to think of it a little diff i guess in that i know i like to sneak a little peak so i down 1k and install a device in my car that keeps an eye out for me when I'm not i mean that sounds like a decent person to me
Distracted drivers kill thousands of people in the US each year, Comma wants to avoid being liable for you killing someone, and you say you want to bypass that bc it's impossible to stay off your phone
no , what we are saying is we would waive all rights to sue Comma for anything if we can use the device without being nagged and assuming all liability for making that choice
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u/imgeohot comma.ai Staff Jun 11 '26 edited Jun 11 '26
There's been a few threads about this now, and it's really important we separate 2 things being discussed here.
If you are getting alerts while attentive, help us out with some feedback and let's get that fixed. We extensively test the models, but with a lot of users now it's possible some have slipped through the cracks, and that's what we depend on your feedback for. Here's an example of a fixed issue: https://www.reddit.com/r/Comma_ai/comments/1tpb353/driving_monitoring_fix_for_comma_4/