The Tesla driver “accidentally hit the gas,” sending the car flying into the frigid waters off of Oslo earlier this week, witnesses told SWNS.

“I don’t think people could hold there more than five minutes in this water, especially with clothes on,” he added. It was very good luck this floating sauna was nearby.”

The sauna boat happened to drift by soon after the Tesla ended up in the water, Oslo police said.

Photos show people on the vessel with towels around their waists pulling the passengers out of the water.

“One of the guests came running and told me a car had landed in the water. I accelerated to full speed in the direction of the people,” the sauna boat’s skipper, Nicholay Nordahl, told Norwegian newspaper VG.

“With the help of two guests, we pulled them up. They were able to warm up in the sauna,” he added.

  • NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.worldEnglish
    91·
    10 months ago

    Tesla’s come with a feature called obstacle avoidance or something like that which in theory could have prevented this, although even that isn’t a guarantee. It’s also a feature that can be enabled/disabled so it’s possible it was disabled.

    In 2022 they said the feature prevents about 40 incidents a day of people pressing the accelerator down instead of the brake.

    Stops you from going into the garage door and other various things.

    “Here, I’m showing a particular mode of failure of humans where they accidentally press the accelerator pedal instead of the brake pedal. For example, these people are pressing the accelerator pedal thinking that they’re pressing the brake pedal. But the car realizes that they are doing this and are heading towards a collision and automatically cuts out the acceleration, and presses the brake to prevent the humans from colliding."

    Edit: Clarity, but also I think the enable/disable is because it does take control away from the driver, and there could be a theoretical emergency situation where one collision by accelerating away, is better than the other incoming collision? Some people might not want to give up that control? Like if you got a semi about to rear end you at full speed, jumping the curb and hitting a fence is probably the better option.

    • sep@lemmy.worldEnglish
      6·
      10 months ago

      There also needs to be an obstacle in the way for the radar to detect. The low railroad track is probably not enough.

        • ShepherdPieEnglish
          3·
          10 months ago

          Even with vision it doesn’t look like a wall or other large object is there to set off the sensor. This probably looks like a speed bump to the camera.

          • NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            10 months ago

            For parking, the vision cars remember what they approached. People say it doesn’t work as good as ultra sonics, but assuming it doesn’t see it as a speed bump vs an object in the way, that should still be okay, at least in theory.

            • ShepherdPieEnglish
              1·
              10 months ago

              I think the problem here is if you program it to stop when it sees a rail like that, odds are a lot of vehicles might stop themselves on roads and parking lots if they see anything that looks somewhat similar.

              • NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.worldEnglish
                1·
                10 months ago

                You can see the barrier is about boot height though in one of the pictures. I don’t think it’s unreasonable for them to be able to discern that vs a speed bump?

                It’s like half raised above the ground, and then half its own height.

                I don’t think this feature works at speed either, I think it’s meant for slow/stopped situations?

                I wonder if they’d consider raising the barrier as well in a spot like this…

          • NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            10 months ago

            Also, if it doesn’t view it as an object, Tesla should go test some cars against that to help improve it. Test them right there even, it’ll cost them so much money for every failure they’ll get it right sooner than later lol.