I don't think the situation is comparable. The comment is redundant because typically you see the commented code right next to it, so reading the code is about as much effort as reading the comments.

In contrast, commit messages often stand alone: If you browse the history, you only see the messages, but now a large number of them; if a commit changes more than one file, the commit message has to sum up the changes from all files.

In all those contexts, a simple, high-level description of what has changed can be enormously helpful.