Can a circle of salt block a Tesla? The video already has tens of millions of views. If some can laugh about it, others fall into the trap.
It’s Friday, March 10 at 11 a.m., and already several people have shared us this video of a Tesla blocked because of a salt circle. The video shared more than 1,900 times on Twitter has accumulated more than 7 million views and more than 40 million views on TikTok.
The funniest thing I’ve learned about Teslas is you can immobilize them with a circle of salt like it’s an evil spirit or something
Can a Tesla be blocked by a salt circle? Self-driving cars are within human reach — but our brains can’t help but wonder if it’s going to bug, like a PC can. But, as we can see on the second TikTok video, the Tesla driver managed to leave his parking space.
In 2017, James Bridle, an artist, created an experiment to prove that the presence of salt and misunderstanding road markings potentially disrupt the operation of an autonomous vehicle. He created a trap by laying two rings of salt around the vehicle, one in broken strips and the other in a continuous line, which simultaneously sent conflicting instructions to keep going straight and not to cross. Obviously, the car had no autonomous function.
At the time, Elon Musk even reacted: “It will probably trap a Tesla in Autopilot, but it will not work with FSD (Full Self-Driving Capabilities). Only the use of pads would stop the FSD. “.
The salt circle has no effect
Presumably, these ravings about semi-autonomous or self-driving cars and salt circles are tied to the folklore of using salt to trap or ward off unwanted visitors. Besides, the same effect could be more easily obtained thanks to any material, such as flour or sugar, to imitate road markings.
As you’d expect, if you manually drive your Tesla, the circle has no effect. One might wonder if the salt circle would block functions like automatic exit, and it does not, since this mode requires manual action from the smartphone.
In short, you can share this video to make your audience laugh. The video is misleading because 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 signals and sensory information, by crossing various data.
It is important to stress that this type of videos should be taken with caution, as it can give an erroneous or misleading image of the capabilities and limits of technologies.
To follow us, we invite you to download our Android and iOS application. You can read our articles, files, and watch our latest YouTube videos.
