Matt Peak presses a button and takes his hands off the wheel. His Chrysler Pacifica keeps rolling at 55 miles an hour. Houses slide by, then a golf course, near his home in Brighton, Mich. He rests his hands on his knees. "Scary as heck, the first time you do it," the retired aircraft mechanic told the Journal's Ryan Felton and Christopher Otts. Chrysler never built the minivan to do this. A $1,000 box from a company called Comma.ai did.
The kit took Peak about an hour to set up. Comma.ai says it works on more than 350 vehicle models going back to 2014. About 30,000 cars have it installed, the paper says. The software is free. You pay only for the hardware. The company says users have logged more than 400 million miles. Its newest kit, the Comma Four, watches the driver's eyes and head and sounds an alert if they drift. The government's figures are different. NHTSA links the device to at least five crashes, with three deaths and 14 injuries, and it opened an investigation in September. Police and incident reports reviewed by the Journal describe drivers who fell asleep or hit stopped cars.
One case from 2025 shows the shape of the risk. A Missouri driver's used Honda Accord hit the back of a car stopped at a red light at 80 mph with the device on. One person in the stopped car was severely injured, according to a lawsuit. The driver was later charged with a misdemeanor. According to a police report the Journal reviewed, he told first responders he had set the automation so he could sleep. Comma.ai declined to comment on the crash or the probe and said its system never replaces the driver.
Legal, and unregulated
The device is legal. There are no federal safety standards for driver-assistance technology, and NHTSA has had its hands full checking the systems carmakers build themselves. "The agency is struggling to keep up with advanced driver tech," said Michael Brooks of the Center for Auto Safety. Tesla (TSLA) sells its Full Self-Driving as a $99 monthly feature. GM has Super Cruise and Ford has BlueCruise. Both let drivers take their hands off the wheel on some highways. No carmaker offers full autonomy. The kits speak the car's own internal language, so the car can't tell who's driving. Most cars on the road today can't block a third party from taking over. Automakers say the kit may void the warranty. Comma.ai disagrees. It says federal law makes a carmaker honor the warranty unless it can prove the kit caused the fault. A rival, Epilog, sells a similar box it says fits 300-plus vehicles.
Our read
Insurance and Consumer Protection, M11. The planning problem here isn't the technology. It's who pays when it fails. The driver stays legally responsible, NHTSA says. Yet a $1,000 aftermarket box that takes the wheel can turn a simple claim into a fight on three fronts. The automaker argues the warranty. The insurer asks whether the car was modified without notice. The injured party's lawyer asks who installed what. The Missouri driver was charged, and a lawsuit followed. None of that shows up on the product page. We'd steer clear of the kit. Tesla is held at weight in 13 model books, nothing added. GM and Ford aren't held.
Here's where it touches your plan. If anyone in your household has one of these kits, or is eyeing one, pull the auto policy this week and read the section on vehicle modifications and the exclusions. Call the agent and ask, in plain words, whether an aftermarket driving aid changes your coverage. Then check your umbrella policy's limit, since a crash at 80 mph into a stopped car can run past most auto limits fast. You check the brakes before the hill, not on the way down. Bring the policy to your next review and we'll read the fine print together.