The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s Office of Defects Investigation (ODI) is investigating Comma.ai following reports of five crashes involving the startup's aftermarket hands-off driver assistance technology. Two of these incidents resulted in three deaths.
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NHTSA investigates Comma.ai's driving tech after five reported crashes
The ODI stated this week that the crashes involved Comma.ai devices failing to detect or respond to slow or stopped vehicles in the same road lane. Across four of the crashes, up to 11 people were injured, including some with serious injuries.
According to the ODI, some of the incidents, including at least one fatal crash, may have involved the use of "forked" or modified versions of Comma.ai's "openpilot" software. In a February 2026 crash in Ascension Parish, Louisiana, a 2022 Toyota RAV4 running FrogPilot—a third-party fork of openpilot—struck an unoccupied police vehicle positioned in the left lane with emergency lights activated. Louisiana State Police reported that two rear-seat passengers in the Toyota died in that incident.
Founded in 2015 by George Hotz, Comma.ai produces devices that can be installed in various modern cars to control Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) and Automated Lane Centering (ALC) systems. While the company's website states that openpilot can steer, accelerate, and brake automatically for vehicles within its lane, it warns drivers that they must always be capable of immediately retaking manual control. The device utilizes a camera-based driver-monitoring system to track distracted or sleepy drivers.
Comma.ai's website notes that the performance of openpilot's Adaptive Cruise Control can be affected by non-moving vehicles in the same lane and that the system is designed with limitations regarding the amount of deceleration and acceleration it can produce during abrupt braking maneuvers.
Sources
- Comma's hands-off driving tech under investigation after 2 fatal crashes （Hacker News Frontpage, 2026-09-23）