Can a circle of salt block a Tesla? The video already has tens of millions of views. If some can laugh at it, others fall into the trap.
It is Friday March 10 at 11 and several people have already shared with us this video of a tesla blocked due to a circle of salt. The video shared more than 1,900 times on Twitter has amassed more than 7 million views and more than 40 million views on TikTok.
The funniest thing I’ve learned about Teslas is that you can immobilize them with a circle of salt like it’s an evil spirit or something.
Can a Tesla be blocked by a circle of salt? Self-driving cars are within the reach of humans, but our brains can’t help but wonder if it’s going to fail, like a PC can. But, as we can see in the second TikTok video, the Tesla driver managed to get out of his parking spot.
In 2017, James Bridle, an artist, created an experiment to show that the presence of salt and the misinterpretation of road markings can alter the operation of an autonomous vehicle. He created a trap by placing two rings of salt around the vehicle, one in broken strips and the other in a solid line, simultaneously sending out conflicting instructions to go straight and not cross. Obviously, the car did not have any autonomous function.
At that time, Elon Musk even reacted: “ It’s likely to catch a Tesla on autopilot, but it won’t work with FSD (Full Self-Driving Capabilities). Only the use of pads would stop the FSD. ».
The salt circle has no effect.
Presumably these rantings about semi-autonomous or self-driving cars and salt circles are related to the folklore of using salt to trap or ward off unwanted visitors. Also, the same effect could be more easily achieved by using any material, such as flour or sugar, to mimic road markings.
As expected, if you manually drive your Tesla, the circle has no effect. One might wonder if the circle of salt would block features like auto-exit, and it doesn’t, as this mode requires manual action from the smartphone.
In short, you can share this video to make your audience laugh. The video is misleading in that it suggests that salt circles can actually cripple an autonomous vehicle, which is not necessarily the case in reality. Autonomous vehicles are designed to interact with their environment using complex algorithms to understand road signs and sensory information, crossing various pieces of data.
It is important to emphasize that these types of videos must be taken with caution, since they can give an erroneous or misleading image of the capabilities and limits of the technologies.
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